Prequel Sequel

Go Set A Watchman is an enjoyable and interesting read. The most enjoyable parts are when Lee's humour shines through, and this is mainly in the sections in which episodes recollected from childhood and adolescence are recounted. There is a lovely scene in which Jem, Dill and Jean-Louise act out an adventure story together in the garden. The arguments about who gets what part are beautifully observed. The pecking order of the three children, based mainly on age, emerges, as does the personality of each. Jean-Louise is the tomboy we know from To Kill A Mockingbird and in a later, equally funny, scene this is underlined when she takes off her overalls ("her only garment") to be ‘baptised’ by Jem in the role of minister, Dill playing his assistant. The baptism takes place in the fish pond belonging Miss Rachel, Dill's aunt, who interrupts the children in the midst of their game. Dill duly rounded up and marched inside, Jem and the naked Jean-Louise then turn home, only to walk straight into their father, Atticus, who is standing in the driveway next the real minister and his wife.

The storytelling is excellent in such episodes; summarising them does not do them justice. There is equal hilarity in the way certain periods of Jean-Louise's adolescence are conveyed. On convincing herself she is pregnant following an unbidden kiss from a classmate, the adolescent Jean-Louise starts counting the days until her baby is due. Eventually, after months of mounting inner torment, she breaks down and tells Calpurnia, the maid, what has been bothering her:

‘"I'm going to have a baby!" she sobbed.

"When?"

"Tomorrow!"’

Although very funny in places, Jean-Louise’s adolescent confusion takes her to the brink of suicide and the compassion and insight with which her growing angst is described adds a dimension to Go Set A Watchman that isn’t present in To Kill A Mockingbird. This is not to say To Kill A Mockingbird lacks anything. Lee’s Pulitzer prize winner is constructed around a relatively short period of Jean-Louise’s childhood. Had the perspective been broader you feel something of its tautness and intensity would have been lost. 

Go Set A Watchman is told from the point of view of a 26-year-old Jean-Louise. Some characters who we already know from To Kill A Mockingbird are very different in Go Set A Watchman, none more so than Atticus, who, as has been much documented, is at this period in Jean-Louise’s life a member of a white supremacist organisation.

On the surface, Atticus as a younger man appears to have been the heroic father described in To Kill A Mockingbird. He once successfully defended a black boy against an unjust charge of rape and secured saintly proportions in Jean-Louise’s mind as a result. But there is a double shock in store for his daughter – and the reader familiar with To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s not that Atticus has changed – he never really was what Jean-Louise thought him to be in the first place. The reason he decided to defend the black boy is because liked “a neat brief”, as the adult Jean-Louise puts it. The boy’s case interfered with Atticus’s orderly mind and he had to “work order out of disorder”.

I don’t really have any misgivings about this very different version of Atticus. In a way, it forces you to confront what is probably a reality of racism – that it can be present in those who do not act upon it, or who appear to have quite a different belief system. It can also be present in a society which has legislation in place which makes it unlawful. That said, this sobering truth would be less likely to hit home were you to read Go Set A Watchman without having read To Kill A Mockingbird, where your unambiguous belief in Atticus is formed along with the young Jean-Louise's.

My only real misgiving about Go Set A Watchman is that it is not as perfect a novel as To Kill A Mockingbird. But I didn’t expect it to be. Go Set A Watchman just proves that Lee’s editor could have encouraged her talent in a variety of different ways. Her material was rich and her writing potential enormous. What’s more, Go Set A Watchman contains enough humour, pathos and astute social observation to make it an interesting and enjoyable book in its own right.