Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Fiction
The voice in Go Set a Watchman was inconsistent and the story was less of a narrative than To Kill a Mockingbird. The voice in the flashbacks was entertaining, while the other parts of the book were almost boring in tone, similar to a voice-over in a documentary. This inconsistency in the book made it seem more like a first draft than a finished novel, which it likely was. I found Go Set a Watchman to be more autobiographical and less fictional than To Kill a Mockingbird, and probably closer to Lee’s actual experiences during that period. As much as the general public would like to believe, it’s unlikely that there were many people during the 1930s in the South who resembled Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Atticus in Go Set a Watchman was probably closer to the personality of a typical lawyer in the South for the time. From these two books, Lee gives us two versions of Atticus, one who is an ideal and a symbol of justice, and the other that is an actual person who holds the beliefs and values of his environment.
Fiction
To
Kill a Mockingbird is one of my
favorite books, so you can imagine how excited I was for Go Set a Watchman.
It was hard to compare the two because the style and substance were so
different. I found it easier to view Go Set a Watchman as a separate
book and the flashbacks as bonus material for To Kill a Mockingbird. Familiar
characters like Jem and Dill make few appearances in these flashbacks and the
characters that are still around are hardly recognizable, such as Atticus. Scout
even goes by a different name (Jean Louise), but she is still recognizable and
the similarities between her younger self are believable.
The voice in Go Set a Watchman was inconsistent and the story was less of a narrative than To Kill a Mockingbird. The voice in the flashbacks was entertaining, while the other parts of the book were almost boring in tone, similar to a voice-over in a documentary. This inconsistency in the book made it seem more like a first draft than a finished novel, which it likely was. I found Go Set a Watchman to be more autobiographical and less fictional than To Kill a Mockingbird, and probably closer to Lee’s actual experiences during that period. As much as the general public would like to believe, it’s unlikely that there were many people during the 1930s in the South who resembled Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Atticus in Go Set a Watchman was probably closer to the personality of a typical lawyer in the South for the time. From these two books, Lee gives us two versions of Atticus, one who is an ideal and a symbol of justice, and the other that is an actual person who holds the beliefs and values of his environment.
What
makes To Kill a Mockingbird great literature is that Lee was able to
take her observations of the South and transform them into universal themes. Go
Set a Watchman is an early step in the evolution of Harper Lee’s writing,
and it is best to view it as that.
