Why you shouldn’t get disillusioned over Atticus Finch

Why you shouldn’t get disillusioned over Atticus Finch August 28, 2015

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most beloved novels in American literature, so its legions of fans were overjoyed to hear that its author, Harper Lee, was going to publish Go Set a Watchman, another novel featuring the same main characters.  But now that the new book has been released, many readers are disillusioned.  In Mockingbird, Atticus Finch comes across as an ideal father, as well as the idealistic lawyer who strikes a blow against racism in defending a falsely-accused black man in the segregated South.  But in Watchman, told from the point of view of his daughter Scout as an adult, we see her conflicts with her father, who is full of flaws, including racial prejudice.

But readers whose admiration for Atticus has been spoiled and who wish they never read the new book need not be dismayed.  According to the iron laws of literary scholarship, the author’s final intention is what counts.  Watchman gives us an earlier version of the story and of the characters.  Mockingbird is the later version, and the good Atticus represents Harper Lee’s final intention.  Let me, a literary scholar though recently retired, explain after the jump.As we blogged about, Go Set a Watchman was Harper Lee’s first attempt at the story.  Told in the third-person from the perspective of an adult who comes back to her old home town and looks back upon her childhood, the manuscript was rejected by publishers.  A helpful editor, though, said that she should rewrite the story from the point of view of the child.  And then the literary magic happened.  The resulting novel was To Kill a Mockingbird.

The confusion with Watchman is that, since it is told in retrospect and now Scout is all grown up, it reads like a sequel.   But it isn’t.   Since it was written earlier than Mockingbird, some are treating it as a prequel.  But it isn’t that either.  It is more like a first draft.

In textual editing, scholars take the earliest version of a manuscript and then trace all of the author’s changes, keeping track of the different manuscripts, revisions, rewrites, and later editions.  The author’s final intentions regarding the characters, as well as the language and imagery, are what governs the final text and what scholars studying the work deal with.

Harper Lee’s first Atticus may have been a mediocre father with racist tendencies.  But she revised the character as she revised the novel’s chronology, style, and point of view.   She changed him into the sainted figure in Mockingbird.  That is the Atticus of the author’s final intention.

The earlier version can be read with great interest as an early attempt of the author’s to deal with the problem of small town racism and to tell her story.  We can then trace how she changed her approach–instead of using Scout’s father as an example of liberal racism, using him as someone who stands against the culture of racism; instead of condemning the culture outright, entering into it from the inside, showing its charms as well; instead of writing about an adult, writing a much more successful story about a child.

These are two versions, the outmoded and discarded, and the new, which became a literary classic.  Atticus Finch became a literary hero, and, by the canons of literary scholarship, he deserves that status.

HT:  Mary L. Smith

"This may surprise some here, but I love the idea of the sacrament of communion ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"I believe many on this blog will disagree with me, but I am not a ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"Again, Sasse sees the communion of Christians with each other in one Body as being ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”
"Are old-Earth and evolution actually incompatible with orthodox Lutheranism, though?ETA: ChatBot Luther says:No, acceptance of ..."

Sasse’s “This Is My Body”

Browse Our Archives