“Go Set A Watchman”, by Harper Lee Book Review To Kill a Mockingbird is a timeless classic that has remained a constant love to every generation since it was published in 1960. Author Harper Lee’s new novel Go Set a Watchman happened to have been her first draft before she had written the revered American Classic, To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM). Even though both books deal with the same characters as well as setting, the storyline is set nearly twenty years apart. Unfortunately, for Atticus Finch, one of the most iconic characters in English Literature is depicted in the Watchman as an aged segregationist suffering from paranoia over the growing civil rights movement. This depiction of the beloved Atticus Finch is so far from his personality
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However, since the book was released, there has been some controversy as to whether Go Set a Watchman should even be read as a sequel, but rather as an entirely separate entity from its relative TKAM. The idea of seeing both books as separate is very tempting, especially if you want desperately to preserve the revered personality of TKAM’s Atticus. However, you may notice as you read the books that Lee uses the same materials in both books, just in completely different ways. Each character is a continuation of the other another, Atticus is still the same person he was in TKAM; you can tell by the way he speaks and behaves, only his views have changed with age. Even Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout still acts, if anything, as an adult version of herself from TKAM. Remember, it is tempting to see Watchman as a separate book, but Lee deliberately created Atticus as an old and paranoid segregationist. That means that it is a sequel whether or not it …show more content…
At this time, Atticus Finch is 72 years old and is crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. He lives with his sister Alexandra and has taken on Henry Clinton as an apprentice at his law firm. Upon her arrival to Maycomb Alabama she expects to meet her father at the Maycomb train station, instead she finds Henry, her childhood sweet heart. Since she has been gone, living in New York, she learned that her family had sold Finch’s Landing, her grandmothers estate. When Jean Louise hears the news, she becomes upset not only because she hadn’t been notified, but also because she believes her world is changing without her knowledge of it. However as time moves on in the novel, she finds that it is even more upsetting that her world hasn’t changed, it just had never been what she thought it was. One day during her stay at the new Finch House, since Atticus sold the original house, she found a racist pamphlet sitting in her fathers’ office. She becomes shaken when she learns that her aunt not only agrees with the contents of the pamphlet, but that her father and Henry both attended a Citizens
However, since the book was released, there has been some controversy as to whether Go Set a Watchman should even be read as a sequel, but rather as an entirely separate entity from its relative TKAM. The idea of seeing both books as separate is very tempting, especially if you want desperately to preserve the revered personality of TKAM’s Atticus. However, you may notice as you read the books that Lee uses the same materials in both books, just in completely different ways. Each character is a continuation of the other another, Atticus is still the same person he was in TKAM; you can tell by the way he speaks and behaves, only his views have changed with age. Even Jean Louise Finch, better known as Scout still acts, if anything, as an adult version of herself from TKAM. Remember, it is tempting to see Watchman as a separate book, but Lee deliberately created Atticus as an old and paranoid segregationist. That means that it is a sequel whether or not it …show more content…
At this time, Atticus Finch is 72 years old and is crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. He lives with his sister Alexandra and has taken on Henry Clinton as an apprentice at his law firm. Upon her arrival to Maycomb Alabama she expects to meet her father at the Maycomb train station, instead she finds Henry, her childhood sweet heart. Since she has been gone, living in New York, she learned that her family had sold Finch’s Landing, her grandmothers estate. When Jean Louise hears the news, she becomes upset not only because she hadn’t been notified, but also because she believes her world is changing without her knowledge of it. However as time moves on in the novel, she finds that it is even more upsetting that her world hasn’t changed, it just had never been what she thought it was. One day during her stay at the new Finch House, since Atticus sold the original house, she found a racist pamphlet sitting in her fathers’ office. She becomes shaken when she learns that her aunt not only agrees with the contents of the pamphlet, but that her father and Henry both attended a Citizens