"Watchman" Symposium

We have had a great symposium on Go Set a Watchman, which our leader Al Brophy has asked me to wrap up.  I have to say, however, that the excellent contributions far exceed my poor power to add or detract.  I do have a few comments, but first let me recommend William Giraldi’s very perceptive article in The New Republic.

Most of the mainstream reviews of Go Set a Watchman have focused on the revelation that Atticus, in the 1950s, appears to be a racist, in sharp contrast to the heroic defender of the 1930s in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Let me suggest instead that the characters are not discontinuous.  The Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird was a pillar of Maycomb’s “best people” and a defender of the social order.  He was a member of the state legislature, and the person called upon to shoot a rabid dog.  He was more than willing to live with and profit from the system of segregation and labor exploitation that made his comfortable life possible.  Three examples from TKAM:

He allowed his children to call Calpurnia by a nickname – “Cal” – while she had to call them Mr. Jem and Miss Jean Louise, in an obvious example of racial subordination in his own home. 

He did not object to the all-white jury or the segregated courtroom for Tom Robinson’s trial.  That might seem like an example of presentism, but note that Sam Leibowitz and Walter Pollak argued exactly that point in the Scottsboro trials of 1932 and 1935.

He made light of the Ku Klux Klan, calling it a “political organization,” and joking about their threats against the shopkeeper Sam Levy.  According to Atticus, Levy just scolded the Klan members into leaving him alone – but you can bet that Levy and his family took the prospect of violent anti-Semitism a lot more seriously than that in 1936.

So Atticus was at least a tacit supporter (and beneficiary) of segregation, even in To Kill a Mockingbird.  That was not inconsistent with a commitment justice and fair trials.  Lynchings, after all, disrupt the status quo.  Many ardent segregationists were opposed to lynching.  Even in the Scottsboro cases, the Alabama establishment took pains to prevent an extra-legal lynching (legal lynchings, of course, were another matter).

Thus, Atticus’s tolerance for the Klan and membership in the 1950s White Citizens Council would have been completely consistent with his spirited defense of Tom Robinson – whom even Scout called a “respectable Negro.”  In Maycomb, respectability meant staying in your place, which was something that Atticus valued in both books.

Comments

[Enrique Guerra Pujol]

Frankly, Harpee Lee is old hat ... I recommend "The Meirsault Investigation" instead

[Miriam Cherry]

Interesting. I tried to see it this way, but to me these are just not the same characters at all. One is Atticus, one is not-Atticus, or Atticus, and then Bizzaro-Atticus. That is why, in my contribution, I had Atticus consulting his attorney in the hope of filing a defamation lawsuit. Also, I returned GSaW to the store. Apparently others are doing so as well: http://www.freep.com/story/money/business/michigan/2015/08/04/harper-lee-return-policy/31105525/