A Response to Go Set a Watchman (Haley Barnes)

In Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman, the old characters, Jean-Louise and Atticus Finch, from To Kill a Mockingbird, come back from a story we know and love. Except this time around things are a little different. First of all the story takes place 17 years later, Jean-Louise is 26 at this point and Atticus is an aging man. Second we learn that Atticus, a man who we thought was above racism, and the man she loves, Henry, is attending Klan meetings. Jean-Louise does not take this well. She suffers a crisis of conscience, feeling betrayed by everything she grew up knowing and believing.

In Go Set A Watchman, blindness is a key theme. Jean-Louise spends so much of her time visiting home focusing on how everyone she knows and loves is a hypocrite, and she fails to see her own hypocrisy. In her eyes, she is perfect. He father calls her inconsistent because she is angry at Atticus for his racist beliefs, but still ignores the true struggles of black people. In this way, she is blind.

She does however realize that society expects her and everyone else to “conform to certain demands” that Deep South Alabama holds in the 1950s. She says, “Jean Louise Finch, you are not reacting according to your kind, therefore you do not exist.” If she conforms to the ideals of “her kind” her strong-willed voice would be silenced. At one point Jean-Louise realized that “if [she] married, [she] would become Jean-Louise the Silent.” She was right. Marrying Henry, a racist, would compromise everything she believed. She would be blind if she chose to marry him.

The idea of a watchman in this novel is one’s conscience and principles. Jean-Louise thinks she needs a watchman leading her, but as long as her conscience is strong she won’t be blind to what is right. However, does Jean-Louise’s blindness and hypocrisy mean that she is not in the right morally? In To Kill A Mockingbird, we knew Atticus as a man of the law and a strong believer in what he thinks is morally right. So why does he attend racist meetings? Is he actually racist or is he just conforming to the society in Maycomb?

 

 

An Exploration of Conflict: A Reader’s Response to Go Set a Watchman

While perusing through my past blog posts, I noticed that I always have talked about either different characters or certain parts of the plot that I can draw connections to. Often, I have found that these types of posts are the easiest to do. However, since this is my last blog post, I have decided to go outside the box a bit and do something that I have never done: an exploration of conflict for Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.

We all might be familiar with the types of conflict that exist, but just to set the basis for my exploration, I am going to list them out: Man vs. Himself, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. Society. In my opinion, Man vs. Society is the most common as it can involve not just one man against a whole group, but also one man against another or even one man against obstacles created by others. This type of conflict is represented in novels such as Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and the prequel to Go Set a Watchman: America’s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is basically up against an entire jury and town that he knows will not listen to him as he tries to prove that the Tom Robinson (an African American) was not guilty of rape. The second most common type of conflict in my opinion (at least based on fame) is Man vs. Nature. We tend to see this type of theme in every single one of Jack London’s books, as some man tries to escape the dangers present in the state of Alaska and its wilderness.

Finally, the last common type of conflict is Man vs. Himself. I’m not going to say that these types of books aren’t popular; however, I know for a fact that they are extremely polarizing. The books that I can think of off the top of my head are Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. While I was a fan of Catcher, I know for a fact that it did not sit well with plenty of students. I am most definitely a critic of Kafka’s novel and know for a fact that criticism was high in my 10^th grade English class for it. Regarding Go Set a Watchman, I think that because my expectations were so high based off of the suspense and action in the prequel, they fell pretty flat in comparison. The novel was not “bad”; however, it was just about Jean Louise (known more popularly as Scout) and how she was dealing with the fact that Atticus might or might not be racist. The problem was that the entire novel contained WAY too much conversation, and I felt that a lot of it was not needed, especially the incessant flashbacks in Scout’s mind that had nothing to do with the novel as a whole. The reason why I liked Catcher (an others did not) is because of the heavy sarcasm, humor and annoyed, teenage tone of Holden throughout the novel. While Go Set a Watchman had a bit of humor, it contained many historical and serious passages that had me wanting to get through the book quicker than I intended. This experience of mine led me to a few questions. Do you all feel that Man vs. Himself books are generally less enjoyable? If not, then what do you like about them? Do you think that there is some merit associated with this type of writing? Let me know!