by Rishika. S. Pardikar
From “To Kill a Mockingbird” to “Go Set a Watchman”, from one Southern coming-of-age story to another – first one introducing Scout to race and class and the inequality that ensues and the second one forcing her to confront reality – Harper Lee gave us more than just two novels.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a story set in the Deep South in the 1930s and gave its American audience a much-needed nudge when it came to issues regarding racial inequality. Published in 1960 when the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum, the novel was a hard-hitting tale written with undertones of youthful innocence, courage and compassion. Lee’s portrayal of Scout, her brother Jem and their friend Dill, and their fascination with the hauntingly mysterious neighbor Boo Radley was adorable. One saw honour and courage in Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem’s father, when he defended an innocent black man in a well-nigh hopeless case wherein the black man was accused of raping a white woman.
Go Set a Watchman, widely thought of as the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, is far more raw in its Southern-ness and the writing is charmingly eccentric with the narration sometimes carelessly changing from third-person to first, interspersed with flashbacks from Jean Louis’ childhood. And you can’t help but draw parallels to Harper Lee’s life: Lee’s father was an attorney who, in 1919, defended two black men accused of murder. And like Atticus Finch he too stood for racial segregation. Maybe bringing in first person narration was invariable given how personal these stories were to her.
She grinned when she saw her first TV antenna atop an unpainted Negro house; as they multiplied, her joy rose.
And the very first paragraph is brought to a close in the comfort that you can now find your moral compass in Jean Louis Finch – a grown-up Scout, and you’re glad.
Jean Louis returns to the “tired-old town” of Maycomb only to find that things are intolerably different. Her father, who she once saw as a near-perfect human being, has now joined the Citizens’ Council – a less-dour, no-lynching and only a slightly more respectable version of the Ku Klux Klan.
But a man who has lived by truth – and you have believed in what he has lived – he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.
Go Set a Watchman, with To Kill a Mockingbird as its background, throws up a contradiction between the Atticus Finch who defended a black man and the Atticus Finch who now mistrusts civil rights.
The present adds so much to Jean Louis’ past that everything she once knew is thrown into doubt. She confronts her father about his association with the Council and he responds by saying that voting rights, among other civilian rights, are privileges that ought to be earned. He argues for racial segregation, substantiating his stand by saying that the black community in Maycomb isn’t educated enough and civilized enough to be a part of the citizenry. Overwhelmed by anger, Jean Louis flees the scene.
Shades of black, white and grey are often seamless and it takes a calm, close read to understand the context which the new novel adds to the story. Also, seemingly inconsistent thoughts are real, they exist – Abraham Lincoln, the president who used his powers to abolish slavery also spoke of limited suffrage for the Black community thereby harbouring, what may appear to be, conflicting views.
On looking closely, the inconsistencies fade away. You now wonder if Atticus defended the black man only because he knew that the man was innocent. He was a small town lawyer who believed in justice; the colour of his client’s skin had very little to do with the defense.
“Has it never occurred to you— have you never, somewhere along the line, received vibrations to the effect— that this territory was a separate nation? No matter what its political bonds, a nation with its own people, existing within a nation? A society highly paradoxical, with alarming inequities, but with the private honor of thousands of persons winking like lightning bugs through the night? No war was ever fought for so many different reasons meeting in one reason clear as crystal. They fought to preserve their identity. Their political identity, their personal identity.”
Scout runs to Uncle Jack, Atticus’s brother, taking along with her the immense sorrow and anger over the conversation (confrontation) with her father. In the guise of an explanation, Uncle Jack makes an “eloquent unspoken plea” on behalf of Atticus and Maycomb. He tells Jean Louis about the complexities of living in a Southern state. A strong sense of cultural identity is what holds the people together. He also speaks of how the have-nots – people belonging to the Black community – have risen and demanded and received more than their due while the haves are being restricted.
“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
Atticus Finch (or for that matter even the rest of Maycomb county) belonged to a different place, set in a different era. Demanding that the white inhabitants give up a chunk of their land and their traditions – as misconceived as they may be, isn’t fair. Of course, racist thinking is always rooted in deep arrogance. But we all have, at one point of time or another faltered and obstinately held onto opinions which, in retrospect, we know to be wrong. Reason sometimes fails to matter even with the most level-headed people. Irrationality or mistaken beliefs aren’t really the problem. The real trouble occurs when people, giving credence to those beliefs, act on them. Atticus Finch never joined the Klan, never took part in race riots and cross burnings. Lee neither wrote nor intended for her characters to be seen as violent. True, they were wary of the change the South was going through but whatever they wanted to fight for, they fought with words alone.
She saw her old enemy’s shoulders relax, and she watched him push his hat to the back of his head. “Let’s go home, Scout. It’s been a long day. Open the door for me.”
It’s never easy having people you love believe in things you strongly oppose. Tougher still is having yourself constrained by the people you hold dear.
As Scout, she looked up to her father with the innocence of a child. Now, as Jean Louis Finch, she sees all of him – a man with a man’s heart and a man’s failings. And with a little assistance from her uncle Jack, she begins to understand that it takes humility to accept opinions which are different from your own.
