Tonight's Poet Corner: Introspection
Go Set A Watchman
"The challenge to our conscience"
by Belinda Roddie
A review in lieu of an introspection.
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
There's a certain mood set in the United States these days that has severely polarized the population. Namely, we are told to think in extremes: We are either with the enemy or against the enemy, right wing or left wing, bigoted or tolerant. We are living in the generation of no in-betweens, and we are expected to feel strongly one way or the other. We are told to pick a side, pulled from one end of the idealistic spectrum to the other in a massive mental and emotional tug-of-war, and when that happens, we risk losing our own ideas or sense of self.
Consequently, it is not easy to read Go Set A Watchman, the long-awaited sequel of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, with an open mind. From the beginning, before the publication date, readers were being told what to think about the new novel, and all without reading even the first page of the darn thing. The word controversial was thrown around a lot - controversial in terms of what the book even was, controversial in how it was published given Lee’s age (Potential elder abuse? Not good PR), and controversial in how its beloved characters were being portrayed. The burdensome weight and presence of Mockingbird, no doubt one of the most highly regarded novels of the twentieth century, was and is bright in people's minds. They viewed the arrival of Lee's next novel with a sense of skepticism and a tone that implied that they found the whole scenario to be akin to literary treason.
Of course, that didn't stop Watchman from rising quickly to bestseller status in July of 2015, with the print version selling two to one against e-books. Still, to these dissenting readers, Mockingbird was a masterpiece, better left untouched than expanded upon. Sort of like if someone tried to repaint the eyebrows on Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
That being said, there are things to like in Go Set A Watchman. Maycomb, Alabama is as vivid and beautiful of a setting as ever, if not a little bit grimmer, given that you are now reading about it from the point of view of an adult Scout (called Jean Louise in the new book, but screw it, let’s just call her Scout) rather than her six-year-old self's perspective. Flashbacks to Scout's youth give the readers more context to her upbringing. They witness her getting her first period and becoming convinced that she's pregnant. They see her at her high school dance, wearing falsies that end up sliding around in her dress. They go through the motions with her once she moves to New York and later returns to Maycomb for a visit; in essence, based on the events of the story, she goes through the five stages of grief. This is because she is completely at a loss as to how to handle new realizations about her hometown and its citizenry, and as a result, she lashes out like an animal would when it is struck by its owner.
Scout is, by far, the most relatable character in this book, and understandably so. We followed her childhood, when some of her innocence was lost, in Mockingbird. Now she is twenty-six years old and still driving the story. Watchman is primarily written in third person point of view, occasionally slipping into an awkward and sporadic omniscient narrative, unlike its predecessor, which was written in first person. But it also lapses consistently into Scout's personal stream of consciousness, providing us with her own perspective and presenting her bewilderment, denial, and later revulsion in response to the behavior of the people she grew up with. Atticus Finch, her now arthritic father, becomes a traitor in her eyes. The man she thought was all too justice-oriented and colorblind instead claims that the "Negro race" is "backwards." Scout, surprisingly, does not argue with some of the things that her father harps on, and she, too, harbors common prejudices of the time period; for example, she would never want to marry a black man. The difference, funnily enough, is how they both believe the conflict between the races should be handled. Scout believes that black people ought to integrate into white culture and be given a chance to progress as a group, while Atticus thinks that such an idea is a lost cause, and the races must remain segregated. The word controversial is pretty appropriate here, after all.
The book does become preachy, usually to a fault. Readers may grow tired of hearing about the Tenth Amendment and state rights and the Civil War and the South's "real" problem with black people, and they may wonder if Lee's attempt to make a point is similar to slamming them over the head with a Texas history textbook screaming, "Do you get it now?!" The ending message - that Scout, once tethered to the idealistic image she held of her father, is now her own person and is bigoted in her own way - feels incredibly hackneyed, and the book ends as gracefully as a truck burning rubber as it screeches to a halt at a red light and ultimately winds up halfway in the intersection. While some of the dialogue feels natural and accurate for the time period it’s written in, about half of Scout's inner tirades, as well as her conversations with her kind of, sort of, maybe boyfriend Hank (whom she certainly does not want to marry; no, siree), feel like you're watching one of those films made in the fifties that revolve around couple's banter or moaning monologues that just get same-y and clichéd the more they age. And of course, Dr. Jack Finch, Atticus's brother, falls prey to the dry archetypal technique of, "Let's make this character act mysterious and cryptic for the sake of offering the protagonist her much needed epiphany." It's enough to make you throw down the book and run around town, filling knotholes up with goodies like you're Boo Radley.
Speaking of which, there's no Boo Radley in this book. Calpurnia, the Finches' former maid, appears, but mostly to cheaply spur on Scout's character development. Atticus is, in all fairness, reduced from a three-dimensional character to a simple literary tool in Lee's arsenal to make adult Scout confront an uglier reality: He is not the man she has believed him to be. She must now become her own individual and form her own ideas in response to her father's racism. And by God, does she still love him, and finally accept him as a human being rather than a glorious golden idol!
Not that none of this makes sense, or that none of this should have been written. For all its inconsistencies in terms of character, for all its mechanical flaws (because let's face it, it doesn't have much of a plot, at least not compared to its predecessor), and for all its moments of sloppy writing and outdated ideology, Go Set A Watchman is a vastly important read. Just as Scout must tear off the rose-tinted goggles of her youth and see Maycomb and her father for what they really are, so, too, must we remove our own pink-shaded spectacles and see Lee's world as she meant it to be. We can no longer hinge our belief systems on people or characters that we used to rely on for emotional and philosophical sustenance. We must now come to our own conclusions about life, literature, and justice.
Questions, of course, remain: Why did this book even need to be connected to Mockingbird? Why did it have to have an older Scout or an older Atticus? Why not be its own entity, with new original characters, freed from the daunting shadow of the previous novel? But the truth is (besides being an obvious cash cow), Watchman could never be its own entity. The classic status of Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book that is still read in schools today does not allow anything she wrote later on in her life - or earlier in her life, for that matter - to avoid scrutiny. And with each page turned, one might realize how necessary of a book Watchman really is to the discourse centered around Lee's work and to the scope of literature in general.
It would not come as a surprise if, in the future, Mockingbird and Watchman were read together in a classroom and discussed at length. Just think about the essay prompts: What does this pair of books tell us about the writing process? What does it tell us about editing? What does it tell us about the author's perspective on difficult topics? What does it tell us about time and perspective and change and reality versus expectation? What does it tell us about racism and family and forgiveness and growing up? What does it tell us about the South and history and discrimination? What does it tell us about our own reservations, our own loyalties to the classic while scorning the sequel,or first draft, or whatever? Are we all like twenty-six-year-old Scout, feeling betrayed by the image we have painted of Harper Lee and the characters whose faces have been carved into aging literary and cinematic marble?
Go Set A Watchman reminds us, albeit a bit too bluntly at times, that we are driven by our own consciences, by our own ideas and questions and challenges, and that it is very easy to latch onto what we want to be true or wish were true rather than see what is true. Harper Lee has torn the veil away from our eyes. We are colorblind, like Scout, and unable to truly digest what Lee's characters have become or always have been. Maybe we're justified in our shock about it. Maybe we're not. Regardless, we have been welcomed back to Maycomb and are now being presented with what the author perceived the town and its people to really be. Now it is up to us to determine what messages to walk away with after reading this book.
Now, does the idea that Watchman is important, or should be read, make it a particularly high-quality piece of writing? Absolutely not. Some who consider themselves literary structuralists by nature find that the idea of forcing a message upon anyone results in a mediocre novel. Others have commented on the complicated use of the "white savior" in Lee's works, and how Watchman can even show us that maybe Atticus wasn't so perfect after all, even if he was supposed to be portrayed as some majestic pillar of justice and valor. Others still have said, or written, that they can't even view the characters properly anymore because what they are meant to be in the future are, in actuality, first drafts and outlines of their incarnations in Mockingbird. However, perhaps some readers can forgive this novel for what could possibly be deemed as tired methods of coercing them to understand a moral or connect to a character that they may not particularly like. In the end, it still leaves a lasting impression, no matter what its theme is or how convoluted its structure and style are.
We were all raised with the idol of Atticus Finch erected in front of us, be it in book form or in the face of Gregory Peck in the film adaptation. Some of us will never truly understand racism, especially in today's society where people try to downplay it while it is still very real and very concerning. Watchman’s audience will probably not be “enlightened” by the book - it's not good enough to provide such a strong mental stimulus - but people can understand its energies, its strengths, and its weaknesses. Go Set A Watchman, in the end, challenges the watchman in all of us, and it demands that we form our own opinions without feeling subjected to, or pressured by, anyone else's.
"The challenge to our conscience"
by Belinda Roddie
A review in lieu of an introspection.
WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
There's a certain mood set in the United States these days that has severely polarized the population. Namely, we are told to think in extremes: We are either with the enemy or against the enemy, right wing or left wing, bigoted or tolerant. We are living in the generation of no in-betweens, and we are expected to feel strongly one way or the other. We are told to pick a side, pulled from one end of the idealistic spectrum to the other in a massive mental and emotional tug-of-war, and when that happens, we risk losing our own ideas or sense of self.
Consequently, it is not easy to read Go Set A Watchman, the long-awaited sequel of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, with an open mind. From the beginning, before the publication date, readers were being told what to think about the new novel, and all without reading even the first page of the darn thing. The word controversial was thrown around a lot - controversial in terms of what the book even was, controversial in how it was published given Lee’s age (Potential elder abuse? Not good PR), and controversial in how its beloved characters were being portrayed. The burdensome weight and presence of Mockingbird, no doubt one of the most highly regarded novels of the twentieth century, was and is bright in people's minds. They viewed the arrival of Lee's next novel with a sense of skepticism and a tone that implied that they found the whole scenario to be akin to literary treason.
Of course, that didn't stop Watchman from rising quickly to bestseller status in July of 2015, with the print version selling two to one against e-books. Still, to these dissenting readers, Mockingbird was a masterpiece, better left untouched than expanded upon. Sort of like if someone tried to repaint the eyebrows on Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
That being said, there are things to like in Go Set A Watchman. Maycomb, Alabama is as vivid and beautiful of a setting as ever, if not a little bit grimmer, given that you are now reading about it from the point of view of an adult Scout (called Jean Louise in the new book, but screw it, let’s just call her Scout) rather than her six-year-old self's perspective. Flashbacks to Scout's youth give the readers more context to her upbringing. They witness her getting her first period and becoming convinced that she's pregnant. They see her at her high school dance, wearing falsies that end up sliding around in her dress. They go through the motions with her once she moves to New York and later returns to Maycomb for a visit; in essence, based on the events of the story, she goes through the five stages of grief. This is because she is completely at a loss as to how to handle new realizations about her hometown and its citizenry, and as a result, she lashes out like an animal would when it is struck by its owner.
Scout is, by far, the most relatable character in this book, and understandably so. We followed her childhood, when some of her innocence was lost, in Mockingbird. Now she is twenty-six years old and still driving the story. Watchman is primarily written in third person point of view, occasionally slipping into an awkward and sporadic omniscient narrative, unlike its predecessor, which was written in first person. But it also lapses consistently into Scout's personal stream of consciousness, providing us with her own perspective and presenting her bewilderment, denial, and later revulsion in response to the behavior of the people she grew up with. Atticus Finch, her now arthritic father, becomes a traitor in her eyes. The man she thought was all too justice-oriented and colorblind instead claims that the "Negro race" is "backwards." Scout, surprisingly, does not argue with some of the things that her father harps on, and she, too, harbors common prejudices of the time period; for example, she would never want to marry a black man. The difference, funnily enough, is how they both believe the conflict between the races should be handled. Scout believes that black people ought to integrate into white culture and be given a chance to progress as a group, while Atticus thinks that such an idea is a lost cause, and the races must remain segregated. The word controversial is pretty appropriate here, after all.
The book does become preachy, usually to a fault. Readers may grow tired of hearing about the Tenth Amendment and state rights and the Civil War and the South's "real" problem with black people, and they may wonder if Lee's attempt to make a point is similar to slamming them over the head with a Texas history textbook screaming, "Do you get it now?!" The ending message - that Scout, once tethered to the idealistic image she held of her father, is now her own person and is bigoted in her own way - feels incredibly hackneyed, and the book ends as gracefully as a truck burning rubber as it screeches to a halt at a red light and ultimately winds up halfway in the intersection. While some of the dialogue feels natural and accurate for the time period it’s written in, about half of Scout's inner tirades, as well as her conversations with her kind of, sort of, maybe boyfriend Hank (whom she certainly does not want to marry; no, siree), feel like you're watching one of those films made in the fifties that revolve around couple's banter or moaning monologues that just get same-y and clichéd the more they age. And of course, Dr. Jack Finch, Atticus's brother, falls prey to the dry archetypal technique of, "Let's make this character act mysterious and cryptic for the sake of offering the protagonist her much needed epiphany." It's enough to make you throw down the book and run around town, filling knotholes up with goodies like you're Boo Radley.
Speaking of which, there's no Boo Radley in this book. Calpurnia, the Finches' former maid, appears, but mostly to cheaply spur on Scout's character development. Atticus is, in all fairness, reduced from a three-dimensional character to a simple literary tool in Lee's arsenal to make adult Scout confront an uglier reality: He is not the man she has believed him to be. She must now become her own individual and form her own ideas in response to her father's racism. And by God, does she still love him, and finally accept him as a human being rather than a glorious golden idol!
Not that none of this makes sense, or that none of this should have been written. For all its inconsistencies in terms of character, for all its mechanical flaws (because let's face it, it doesn't have much of a plot, at least not compared to its predecessor), and for all its moments of sloppy writing and outdated ideology, Go Set A Watchman is a vastly important read. Just as Scout must tear off the rose-tinted goggles of her youth and see Maycomb and her father for what they really are, so, too, must we remove our own pink-shaded spectacles and see Lee's world as she meant it to be. We can no longer hinge our belief systems on people or characters that we used to rely on for emotional and philosophical sustenance. We must now come to our own conclusions about life, literature, and justice.
Questions, of course, remain: Why did this book even need to be connected to Mockingbird? Why did it have to have an older Scout or an older Atticus? Why not be its own entity, with new original characters, freed from the daunting shadow of the previous novel? But the truth is (besides being an obvious cash cow), Watchman could never be its own entity. The classic status of Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning book that is still read in schools today does not allow anything she wrote later on in her life - or earlier in her life, for that matter - to avoid scrutiny. And with each page turned, one might realize how necessary of a book Watchman really is to the discourse centered around Lee's work and to the scope of literature in general.
It would not come as a surprise if, in the future, Mockingbird and Watchman were read together in a classroom and discussed at length. Just think about the essay prompts: What does this pair of books tell us about the writing process? What does it tell us about editing? What does it tell us about the author's perspective on difficult topics? What does it tell us about time and perspective and change and reality versus expectation? What does it tell us about racism and family and forgiveness and growing up? What does it tell us about the South and history and discrimination? What does it tell us about our own reservations, our own loyalties to the classic while scorning the sequel,or first draft, or whatever? Are we all like twenty-six-year-old Scout, feeling betrayed by the image we have painted of Harper Lee and the characters whose faces have been carved into aging literary and cinematic marble?
Go Set A Watchman reminds us, albeit a bit too bluntly at times, that we are driven by our own consciences, by our own ideas and questions and challenges, and that it is very easy to latch onto what we want to be true or wish were true rather than see what is true. Harper Lee has torn the veil away from our eyes. We are colorblind, like Scout, and unable to truly digest what Lee's characters have become or always have been. Maybe we're justified in our shock about it. Maybe we're not. Regardless, we have been welcomed back to Maycomb and are now being presented with what the author perceived the town and its people to really be. Now it is up to us to determine what messages to walk away with after reading this book.
Now, does the idea that Watchman is important, or should be read, make it a particularly high-quality piece of writing? Absolutely not. Some who consider themselves literary structuralists by nature find that the idea of forcing a message upon anyone results in a mediocre novel. Others have commented on the complicated use of the "white savior" in Lee's works, and how Watchman can even show us that maybe Atticus wasn't so perfect after all, even if he was supposed to be portrayed as some majestic pillar of justice and valor. Others still have said, or written, that they can't even view the characters properly anymore because what they are meant to be in the future are, in actuality, first drafts and outlines of their incarnations in Mockingbird. However, perhaps some readers can forgive this novel for what could possibly be deemed as tired methods of coercing them to understand a moral or connect to a character that they may not particularly like. In the end, it still leaves a lasting impression, no matter what its theme is or how convoluted its structure and style are.
We were all raised with the idol of Atticus Finch erected in front of us, be it in book form or in the face of Gregory Peck in the film adaptation. Some of us will never truly understand racism, especially in today's society where people try to downplay it while it is still very real and very concerning. Watchman’s audience will probably not be “enlightened” by the book - it's not good enough to provide such a strong mental stimulus - but people can understand its energies, its strengths, and its weaknesses. Go Set A Watchman, in the end, challenges the watchman in all of us, and it demands that we form our own opinions without feeling subjected to, or pressured by, anyone else's.
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