I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school and while it didn’t have a profound impact on my sense of self, occasionally I’ll pull it from the shelf to read random passages. It’s beautiful, it’s eloquent, and it describes the South in a way that’s often understated—a close knit communal haven away from the cacophony of city-life. The many beatific descriptions are so sublime and calming that one can’t help but become attached to the story, the characters, and the setting.
Meanwhile, the book speaks volumes about racism and the seedy underbelly of small-town politics. The character of Boo Radley, a sinister monster of the children’s’ nightmares, mirrors this darkness. He is little seen and there is much fear and superstition around his lore. This is a very real problem in modern America, and the characters seem all too real. Yet, the novel deals with these themes so deftly and so honestly that its almost difficult to understand how somebody could come up with such succinct brilliance.
Nevertheless, I have anticipated a second novel by Harper Lee and was quite ecstatic when I heard it was on the way. That novel turned out to be Go Set a Watchman. The title references the fall of Babylon, and that is definitely what Harper Lee was referencing when choosing the title.
At this point in 2025, the book is much maligned. The internet had its way with how they felt about famous justiciar Atticus Finch becoming a “racist” caricature of Southern ideology. Yet, it seemed to me that many people were approaching this book with heroism idolatry firmly in tow. I guess you could almost hear somebody say, “Here’s a new Harper Lee book. It better have Atticus tackling racism, so I kind reaffirm that heroism is alive and well.”
But therein lies the problem: people are complicated, people change, and heroes rarely, if ever, exist.
Senior vice president and publisher of HarperCollins Jonathan Burnham said that readers would probably “have strong feelings” regarding the book because it “has real relevance, real topicality in its treatment of race.” I actually agree with this sentiment because characters and humans are complicated. In our own age, we’ve watched baby boomers transform from peace-loving hippies into MAGA-hat wearing nationalists. It’s true. The peace and love movement changed from just that to something far more xenophobic and fearful. Times change, and so do people. In one instant you are the social center of the nation and in the next instant you are asking your grandchild to help you convert a document into a PDF.
In Go Set a Watchmen, Atticus Finch changes from the selfless lawyer who stands for justice, into an aging exclusionist who sits on his porch and reads the paper. Jean Louise, formerly Scout, watches this change occur in her father, and she finds this to be foundation breaking. The man she knew from her childhood has changed; or, maybe, he was always this way but she admired him through rose-colored glasses.
As stated by Daniel D’Addario for Time: “… the tone of To Kill a Mockingbird, with its deceptively simple, childlike curiosity, simply elided consequences of those traditions that might be on the uglier side, because a young daughter overlooks the frailties in her father that are beyond her understanding.”
And there is truth to this comment. Harper Lee is quite a capable writer and prescient enough to understand the changing tides of civilization. Those of us that start off as idealists often turn to conservative values later in life. While Atticus is already an older man in To Kill a Mockingbird, it stands to reason that Jean Louise didn’t really know her father.
But there is no excusing his beliefs in the novel. Atticus lobbies against his daughter and argues with her that his state should be left alone. That Black Americans by the busload and carload are bad business for White schools. In this way, we see Atticus as a traditionalist. A man afraid of change. But, while these attitudes are vile, many readers seem to miss the aforementioned point of the novel: the times they are a changin’.
What was once your beloved father, is now just a husk of a man you don’t recognize. The ideals you were raised on are not actually the ones being lived (see Flannery O’Connor). This is a complicated truth. Yet, I don’t think Go Set a Watchmen is near the perfection of To Kill a Mockingbird. But, it is a novel by an author who understands the world far better than even she lets on. And, apparently more than even the reader will ever acknowledge.
