Go Set A Watchman: Atticus Finch 'unmasked as racist' in To Kill A Mockingbird sequel

 
Heroic character: Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the film adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird
Robin de Peyer11 July 2015

Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer in literary classic To Kill A Mockingbird, is revealed as a racist bigot in Harper Lee's much-anticipated sequel.

In Go Set A Watchman, the character emerges as someone who attended a Ku Klux Klan gathering who is critical of the civil rights movement, according to one of the first reviews of the novel.

The new novel, Go Set A Watchman, is out on Tuesday and is already a guaranteed best-seller as the follow-up to Lee's 1960 book about a rape trial in the racially-divided deep south of the US.

Mockingbird and its central characters, Scout, her brother Jem and their lawyer father Atticus, became part of the fabric of US literature and has been studied by millions of schoolchildren since its release.

Atticus is portrayed as a heroic lawyer in the novel, defending the rights of African-Americans facing a prejudiced legal system in the American Deep South.

Mockingbird's sequel, Go Set A Watchman, revolves around the now-adult Scout's return to her native Alabama from New York to visit her father.

But according to a review in the New York Times, fans of Mockingbird will be introduced to a different side of Atticus.

The review says: "We remember Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, as that novel's moral conscience: kind, wise, honourable, an avatar of integrity who used his gifts as a lawyer to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town filled with prejudice and hatred in the 1930s."

It adds: "Shockingly, in Ms. Lee's long-awaited novel, Go Set a Watchman, Atticus is a racist who once attended a Klan meeting, who says things like 'The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.' Or asks his daughter: 'Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theatres? Do you want them in our world?"'

The review later adds: "The depiction of Atticus in Watchman makes for disturbing reading, and for Mockingbird fans, it's especially disorienting. Scout is shocked to find, during her trip home, that her beloved father, who taught her everything she knows about fairness and compassion, has been affiliating with raving anti-integration, anti-black crazies, and the reader shares her horror and confusion.

"How could the saintly Atticus - described early in the book in much the same terms as he is in Mockingbird - suddenly emerge as a bigot? Suggestions about changing times and the polarising effects of the civil rights movement seem insufficient when it comes to explaining such a radical change, and the reader, like Scout, cannot help feeling baffled and distressed."

News of the new book's publication stunned the literary world earlier this year and concerns were raised about the extent of Lee's involvement in the project.

Her agent was forced to respond to reports suggesting the 88-year-old was being taken advantage of over the publication of the book.

Authorities in her native Alabama closed their investigation into the issue saying the reclusive writer had "made it quite clear" she wanted the book published.

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