I always imagined Jem & Scout would grow up to be lawyers. Probably because of the epigraph which begins To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought that Atticus would raise them to shoot straight up, like steel arrows. It turns out he did.
I tried to explain this book to a friend this morning, & I wasn't sure exactly how. I said, "It was... it was incredibly, incredibly upsetting. And yet somehow very beautiful."
Because I don't know how to exactly explain why I loved it so much, I'll begin at the beginning:
Scout is home on vacation for a few days. No one really calls her Scout anymore, except her father. He needs her to drive him places. The house is gone. Now it's an ice cream shop. A guy she grew up with wants to marry her.
This novel is not To Kill a Mockingbird. It is different. For one, many beloved characters are missing. There is no mention of Boo, & the adventures of Jem, Dill, and Scout on the front lawn of Atticus's house seem to have blown away, like so many childhood memories. Aunt Alexandra exists as a stern presence, scolding Scout for this or that unladylike infraction, but the mother figure in the Pulitzer-winning novel (Calpurnia) is altered, distant, unreachable. Scout is restless and cynical in Go Set a Watchman (not all that altered from childhood Scout). She still curses too much, shouts rather than listening, and relishes her unladylike pants. She still sits at parties & is appalled that this -- this endless chatter about babies & Maude's hat & the weather and husbands -- might be her destiny.
Fortunately, Maycomb brings back memories of the joyful childhood days which seem to be missing in Go Set a Watchman. Amid a marriage proposal and a scandalous dip in the water at Finch's Landing, Scout recalls her early days in Maycomb. Passages follow which are rich with nostalgia. Many reveal the seeds of To Kill a Mockingbird, which would be born out of Go Set a Watchman. Scout briefly recalls the famous trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, and her father's role in it. (Some editor clearly underlined this brief passage with five thousand red lines in the draft and said WRITE THIS!)
Other scenes go well beyond the few years which make up the frame of To Kill a Mockingbird, and these were especially fun to read because we see Scout, Dill, Jem, Atticus and Calpurnia beyond the walls of To Kill a Mockingbird. These scenes don't weave together neatly, the way they do in To Kill a Mockingbird. They're not directed toward a central theme: they are merely enjoyable memories. So they were fun to read, but perhaps would not have been as fun to read, if I didn't already love Scout & her friends.
There are long passages where Scout's an adult too. That's the larger story. Those passages were less rich for me, at first. They lack the detail and charm of the flashbacks, though they do have a thematic direction.
I think what made the novel really work for me in the early part was my familiarity with To Kill a Mockingbird: I craved Dill, Jem, Scout, Atticus, lemonade on the porch, Calpurnia, summers in the front yard, innocence. I craved more Atticus wisdom. Anything Atticus. I laughed out loud during one of the flashbacks, when Dill, Jem and Scout are playing revival and get caught by Atticus and the reverend. Oh, Scout! And Dill, bickering to be the one baptized! Those are the Finch adventures I remember. I loved reading those parts, thematic weave or not!
Then, about three-fourths in, we come to the shattering. Friends, I read with my jaw dropped. Horrible, cutting conversation which felt all too real. I think I've never read anything more disturbing than the chapters which begin about three-fourths in, in Go Set a Watchman. It was upsetting and excruciatingly affecting, because these are characters I love. I actually felt everything Scout feels, I think. It was in the final fifteen pages that the tears began for me, as they always do in the final pages of To Kill a Mockingbird.
As a writer, I find it interesting to contemplate the changes made from this manuscript to the final (To Kill a Mockingbird.) I find the final product subtler, more artistic, and more joyful. This one is blunt, & in places reads like a battering ram disguised as a novel. I do not object to the battering ram.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
It's interesting that in the revision of this novel (To Kill a Mockingbird) the hero is a man. What I notice, looking back on To Kill a Mockingbird, though, is that even in that novel, it was Scout, not her father, who reached for Boo Radley's hand.
This book changes & enriches To Kill a Mockingbird, because it suggests that one can be prejudiced for or against a person, without really knowing that person. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout misjudges the quiet Boo Radley. In Go Set a Watchman, we realize she has misjudged Atticus, too. In both books, the strong, strong message is: do not let your identity be so fully fixated on someone else's that you fail to see for yourself.
Chaos overtakes the novel, after the beautiful flashbacks. It goes dark, there is shouting, there is horrific truth unveiled. Aunt Alexandra's chatter about ladylike behavior, Jem's "I'm a gentleman, like Atticus." These bits start to fray, in the last three-fourths of the novel. What is a gentleman? What is a lady? Both shrink to nothing in the final scene with Calpurnia. But to be -- to be one's own watchman within all of the shouting? That was the magic of Atticus Finch. Whoever he was inside, whoever he was beneath his actions, he created an impression which has been with us for fifty years, which sowed a seed in this reader. Such an enormous seed I couldn't believe what I was reading yesterday, when that solid seed soured.
Disenchantment. Incredible frustration. How can you possibly actually be saying this? What should I believe in such a world? The chaos rising around me. The unimaginable actions of people, both beautiful & horrifically heinous. That's what Go Set a Watchman is about, through the point of view of a girl who still cannot believe what she is seeing, still must make some sense of utter innocence being shattered by the world around her -- only this time, she has nothing to cling to but herself. This time, the hero is not a silent, hard-working man with a set jaw & a pair of glasses. The hero is an awkward girl with a cigarette and a cowlick, who still curses, who doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, who loved a man in a pair of glasses with a quiet way & a newspaper, and who grew up believing that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you stand up -- and you say it. No matter what.
When Scout screams at Atticus, "You sowed the seeds in me, Atticus!"-- I wanted to stand up and applaud, because I think that's the point in this novel. We are influenced in our childhood, for better or worse. Influenced by our heritage and culture, influenced by how others react to us, and finally (hopefully) influenced by the watchman within us. Atticus planted a watchman in Scout that even he couldn't unseat.
I find the release of this book incredibly timely. I mean, Lee gave us fifty years with the man. Fifty years to say, "Well, at least there's Atticus, though." She gave us hope. Fifty years to Scout's twenty. I feel like shaking him and screaming, "But you planted the seed in me, Atticus!"
I almost feel like, by publishing this book now, Lee is saying to all of us, "Go set a watchman. There is no Atticus, unless you make him out of yourselves. DO it." Because in a way, we are all the children of Atticus Finch, now. We are all the children of an America that we were told was good & honorable.
There is no way to end this review. I'm still reeling.
