I was taught To Kill a Mockingbird with the reverence of a holy book. My English teacher was in love with it; she loved everything about it. When reading aloud, certain lines would make her cry. As a fourteen year old, I did not appreciate the subtleties as I do now.
When I first heard that Harper Lee was publishing another book, my mind immediately went to my English teacher and the uncontrolled little-kid-on-Christmas-morning excitement I could imagine on her face.
Of course, I was excited too. Forget that I haven’t read it in several years: I can very much appreciate it as a work of art. Here is the thing: when someone asks what a book is about, they expect a two sentence overview, but some books cannot be done justice in only two sentences. They are too deep, too complex, too beautiful to butcher in that way. If someone asks me what To Kill a Mockingbird is about, I would answer “you just have to go read it”. It is better when experienced for yourself.
I would like to think that everyone has read To Kill a Mockingbird and that a summary is not necessary. However, we do not live in an ideal world, so let me try to explain. It is told from the perspective of eight year old Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, a white girl who lives in Alabama in the early 1930s, who witnesses things she does not necessarily understand. Race is one major focus, and that is the one I will address. Her father, Atticus Finch, is a man ahead of his time. He ventures across the line separating racial interactions by defending Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a white woman. He is the epitome of good character and pure values.
No one ever expected Harper Lee to follow up her first success, but the dreams of fans everywhere are finally coming true. Go Set a Watchman was released on July 14 by HarperCollins in the US, and William Heinemann in the UK. HarperCollins announced that just in the first week, it had sold more than 1.1 million copies, making it the “fastest-selling book in company history.”
In Go Set a Watchman, twenty-six year old Scout is living in New York City, and learns some disturbing things about her family upon returning home to Maycomb County. In the midst of the civil rights tension in the South, Atticus is exposed as a hypocrite and segregationist. His previous pedestal is compromised.
This is not a new novel. Harper Lee completed it in 1957, but her editor, Tay Hohoff, considered the draft “more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel.” Lee reworked it, and in 1960 released it as To Kill a Mockingbird. Over fifty years later, Go Set a Watchman was published in the exact form that it was first written. In the time between her first and final draft, Lee obviously developed her characters. Atticus, along with everyone else, is not the growth of his To Kill a Mockingbird self. If anything, it is the other way around. For this reason, Go Set a Watchman cannot be taken as a sequel, despite being publicized as such.
The original manuscript was supposedly rediscovered in late 2014 by Lee’s lawyer, Tonja Carter. This is where the controversy begins. Carter may or may not have been in a meeting in 2011 with Lee’s former agent, where they discovered the manuscript that turned out to be Go Set a Watchman: there are two conflicting accounts regarding whether she was present. The timing of the official announcement is suspicious, considering Lee’s declining health and the death of her sister and caregiver, Alice Lee, only two months before. Carter could possibly have been waiting for the moment when she became Harper Lee’s new protector to bring this manuscript out into the open.
So why choose this time to release the book, after saying for years that she would never publish again? The timing seems too calculated. This could be a huge money grab, considering that millions would jump at the chance to read anything that came from Lee’s pen, and every last one of them would be willing to pay for that chance. So is this a premeditated move on the part of Lee’s new protector? Quite possibly.
Who would have expected controversy surrounding the release of a companion to the beloved classic? We should ideally have nothing to discuss besides the symbolism and literary intricacies. However, it is not all negative. While the timing is calculated at best, there are optimistic theories.
Is it just me, or has racism been on the rise? Media coverage could be a factor in this, but the number of black lives taken by police seems to be increasing alarmingly. It is as if the KKK of Scout’s time have abandoned their white robes, and instead donned police uniforms and judge’s robes. Murder is now committed in the name of justice, and no one says a word. In light of all of this wrong, Lee’s new book reminds us of what we have forgotten. This book is a message, we should have progressed much further since the 1960s than we have. Even if this was not her intent, it is an ideal take-away. Let us please appreciate the message Lee originally sent, which has not changed.
I’m not one for doing what everyone else does, because popularity does not necessarily imply merit. See, you have Fifty Shades of Grey popular, and then you have Harper Lee popular. Let me tell you, the latter is much more worth it. Which is why to conclude, I would like to urge anyone who has not read this literary classic to pick it up and see what all the hype is about. Everyone should experience it for themselves.
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