![Picture](/uploads/7/7/7/4/7774990/published/go-set-a-watchman.jpg?1602953510)
To Kill A Mockingbird is one of my all-time favourite books, so why would I want to read a book in which Atticus has horns and not a halo? However, I have to say, I so enjoyed Go Set A Watchman I immediately read it a second time whilst also re-reading TKAM. That GSAW was the precursor to TKAM can be seen in several passages which occur almost unchanged in both books but it is still astonishing that GSAW was basically demolished and a very different novel was built from the rubble.
I can understand why some critics think TKAM is the better novel in terms of character development, structure and plot. The narrative device of a child is a powerful way of pointing up how far the adults have fallen from their childhood innocence - echoing the fall of man from the Garden of Eden. But I found GSAW far more powerful in the themes it explores; more realistic and less idealistic than TKAM.
The very title, “Go Set A Watchman” shows where Harper Lee is coming from. She was a Methodist, steeped in the bible and writing for a very Christian orientated society. She chooses words from the prophet Isaiah as the central message of the novel:
“For thus hath the Lord said unto me , Go , set a watchman , let him declare what he seeth . ” (Is 21:6)
This continues in verse 9:
“Now behold, here comes a troop of riders, horsemen in pairs. And one said, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; And all the images of her gods are shattered on the ground.”
Isaiah was a prophet when the Jews were in exile, held captive in Babylon. What he “seeth” is the coming destruction of Babylon and the liberation of the Jews. I think this is Lee’s central message of GSAW. She wrote it at the end of the McCarthy era when African Americans were beginning their campaign for equal rights and many passages in the novel read like the denunciations of an Old Testament prophet.
“Colour-blind” Jean Louise returns to her hometown to find her New York values are not only at odds with Maycombe County but tragically at odds with her much revered Father and her would-be husband. The flashbacks to childhood where black and white lived alongside each other in a separated harmony and where Scout had no understanding of the currents building in the black community contrast sharply with the present where the currents are running strong, and the demand for equal rights is tearing the community apart and tearing Jean Louise apart from all those she holds dear. Like a prophet she sees the inevitability of what is coming but her Maycombe contemporaries are oblivious. There is a telling passage in the “Coffee” gathering where Jean Louise, listening to a young woman she grew up with, reflects how the great words of the Gettysburg Address and the Constitution have become a grotesque parody:
"Conceived in mistrust and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil. “ — they make no bones about saying they want to do away with the Negro race, and they will in four generations, Bill says, if they start with this one …” I hope the world will little note nor long remember what you are saying here.“ — and anybody who thinks different’s either a Communist or might as well be one. Passive resistance, my hind foot…” When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, they are Communists.“ — they always want to marry a shade lighter than themselves, they want to mongrelize the race —”
She thinks, “I should like to take your head apart , put a fact in it, and watch it go its way through the runnels of your brain until it comes out of your mouth. We were both born here, we went to the same schools, we were taught the same things. I wonder what you saw and heard.”
The problem with prophets is they are fired up by injustice, seeing the world in terms of the battle between good and evil, a battle to be won without compromise. Given a choice between justice and mercy they would choose justice every time. Jean Louise wants no more to do with Maycombe and no more to do with her Father. But her uncle halts her flight. Was his violence necessary? Was it the only thing she could understand? He calls her a turnip sized bigot because she is combatting one form of intolerance with another.
A well-known passage from TKAM is some words of Atticus:
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
Her uncle makes Jean Louise realise that having shed the skin of the Atticus Scout loved and respected, the Atticus of her childhood, she needs to climb inside his skin afresh and forge a new relationship.
Why did Harper Lee discard the visceral uncompromising, prophetic message of GSAW for the more nuanced TKAM? Was it because she could not reconcile the Old Testament voice of the prophet calling for justice and righteousness with the New Testament message of mercy and forgiveness? By using the eyes of the child Scout, she removed the conflict between Atticus and the adult Jean Louise and silenced the cry of the prophet. This allowed Atticus to stand uncompromised as a Christ-like figure and allowed TKAM to come down on the side of mercy and forgiveness.