In Watchman, when African-American lawyers from the NAACP work in a neighboring county to challenge the exclusion of African Americans from serving on a jury, Atticus fears they may show up in Maycomb, too. And it may explain the shift in Atticus’ character, from a lawyer defending a wrongly accused black man in Mockingbird, to a supporter of the White Citizens Council. In Jim Crow Alabama – where the law denies African Americans voting rights, limits their jury service and segregates them in school – this is what complicates the character of Atticus, who supports a Jim Crow society and thinks that the Constitution does, too.

Set in the fictional Maycomb, Alabama in the late 1950s amidst the push for integration and voting rights, the novel centers on a deep disagreement between Jean Louise Finch and her father, Atticus, over these civil rights issues. Meanwhile, his daughter Jean Louise (the adult Scout) represents a new strain of legal interpretation that’s devoted to justice for all. In this sense, Atticus represents the past: strict adherence to the law, above all else. Yet this shouldn’t be a reason to disparage the novel if anything, it presents a very real tension that many Americans were grappling with in the 1950s: how should they interpret the Constitution? And should the rule of law take precedent over justice being served? He supports the White Citizens Council, argues that African Americans haven’t earned their citizenship and worries what will happen if voter suppression efforts aren’t successful.

That likely explains why a number of reviewers have treated Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman like a dead rodent to be held at arm’s length while taken to the trash.įor unlike Mockingbird’s Atticus – a lone hero who represented a disabled black man falsely accused of assaulting a white woman – the Atticus in Go Set a Watchman opposes Brown v Board of Education, which overturned segregation. Meanwhile, the conservative traditionalist using legal arguments to cling to the past is justly forgotten. The brave, solitary figure standing up for justice against all odds has a claim on the heart.

Go set a watchman