Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee"As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ’em like all of us."
"Madam, my father has left me flopping like a flounder at low tide and you say what's the matter."
There is a lesson for me from Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchmen. Do not trust reviews. Books, movies, places, people and most things else are subjective, and you miss out when you dismiss things based on someone else's opinion. I almost did. Go Set A Watchman is Harper Lee's second novel, published fifty five years after her legendary, much-beloved debut novel To Kill A Mockingbird which gave us Atticus Finch. Apart from being one of the best ever literary characters ever, Atticus Finch has also had the honour of being my email password at one point of time. No wonder thus that I lapped up news on Go Set A Watchman ever since it was announced, and frantically waited for the first reviews to come out. "Atticus Finch is a racist bigot", declared the reviews and drained away all my interest. I wouldn't have read the book at all, but the book found me.
"Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious", says Doctor Finch, Atticus's eccentric but brilliant younger brother. There is no such thing as collective opinion too. "You're very much like him, except you're a bigot and he's not… Not a big one, just an ordinary turnip-sized bigot", he accuses twenty six year old Jean Louise Finch, or Scout as we knew her when she was six years old. It is a controversial and debatable accusation, for Scout is the only character in this book who is almost not-bigoted. When Scout is as shocked as us -- the readers -- at this accusation, he goes on to justify his statement: "what does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn’t give. He stays rigid. Doesn’t even try to listen, just lashes out."
There is a strange sense of irony to Go Set a Watchman. Scout is now an independent woman making a career in New York. She makes occasional visits South to Maycomb, where her home is. On this particular visit home however, she starts noticing things she hadn't before. While being wooed by Henry "Hank" Clinton, Scout realizes that she does not fit into her place of birth. She likes Hank, but does she love him? She also goes on to discover that her own father is against equal rights for "Niggers", feels strongly against a Supreme Court judgment that terms segregation of whites and blacks in schools as illegal, and feels that a citizen should “earn the right to vote”. I am a "Jeffersonian Democrat", he declares, defending his stance. We are Scout, and we feel her confusion. "Why doesn’t their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I’m not. I’m something else and I don’t know what", she asks her uncle.
Go Set A Watchmen's plot is this confusion. Harper Lee's writing is as attractive as it was in To Kill a Mockingbird (of course, this book was supposed to have been written before To Kill a Mockingbird). There are flashbacks taking us to Scout's school days, and these parts are hilarious and delightful. The dynamics of a family that does not have a feminine figure to guide a daughter is portrayed so well. Two major characters from ".. Mockingbird", Jem and Dill, are absent in "..Watchman". Jem is apparently dead of a heart-attack, and Dill is somewhere in Europe.
Atticus Finch is still a great parent. He bails out his kids so many times out of trouble. “Integrity, humor, and patience were the three words for Atticus Finch.” Even his fall from grace is not abrupt, and it is consistent with his World view. The grown up Scout is still as tomboyish, but has her moments of self-doubt. After all, convention dictates how a women should be, and every women who fights convention has to fight self-doubt too. Go Set a Watchman is essentially a coming of age novel, where a girl (a woman) learns that her father has flaws and learns to accept it.
Opinions vary on whether this book was really required. After all, the book is a "first draft" which was allegedly set aside, and there was a lot of money to be made in publishing it with or without the author's explicit consent. Opinions also vary on the act of corrupting one of the greatest male characters of all time. In my personal opinion, this is a much needed book. Most of us are content to classify things in binary - we elevated Atticus to God, and we are ready to bring him down as a racist. Go Set A Watchman is at its core against such delineation. To put it crudely, you might say that it asks us to "reason with racists". However, it could also be put differently, as Dr.Finch does when he remarks "the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”
I wouldn't go as far as to recommend this book as a great read; it might disappoint many of you, as it has disappointed cleverer and more practiced readers than me. However I believe that this is not a book to be dismissed. The views of some of the characters in the book may seem regressive, but remember that this was written years back, and as society grows, our idea of what is regressive changes. We will never know Harper Lee's own views on a lot of these topics, but the characters reflect the mindsets of a lot of decent people. From what I make of it, her views can probably be summed up using the words of advice Atticus gives to a suitor of his own daughter on how to woo her: “Don’t push her. Let her go at her own speed. Push her and every mule in the county’d be easier to live with.” To me, Go Set a Watchman was a delightful read that took me to a faraway place, and had characters I could relate to. Give it a try, and you might feel the same too.
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