Harper Lee’s classic To Kill A Mockingbird has been read by almost every American student since 1960. So when news that the book’s sequel, Go Set A Watchman, was being published, Amazon pre-sales for the book surpassed those of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Despite this hype, the novel didn’t deliver the same thrilling and suspenseful plot as the original, but has merit in its well-written narrative and complex exploration of its characters.
The novel takes place 20 years after the events of Lee’s classic, follows Jean Louise, also known as Scout, as she returns to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City to visit her father, Atticus. The plot centers on Jean Louise trying to come to terms Atticus’ latent racism but eventually recognizing that her childhood home was always rampant with bigotry.The plot in Lee’s new novel is not as complex of that of her classic, only dealing with tensions between Jean Louise and Atticus. Additionally, the hurried plot and weak resolution do not live up to the suspense created in the beginning of the novel. The novel asks great questions about love in the face of conflicting beliefs, but Lee doesn’t satisfyingly respond to them.
However, Atticus’s behavior in Lee’s new novel does provide a more nuanced understanding of his character than readers knew from the oblivious, heroified view of him Scout held in To Kill A Mockingbird. But after rereading the original, it became clear that Atticus was always racist. For example, he calls the Ku Klux Klan “a political organization more than anything else” in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus’s morality lay not in his opposition to white supremacy but rather in defense of a man he knew to be innocent.
The new novel is punctuated by Jean Louise’s flashbacks to her childhood life. These memories are reminiscent of the world of To Kill A Mockingbird, and are almost inarguably the novel’s most interesting and vivid parts.Lee uses creative flashback transitions and humorous anecdotes, such as an ignorant sixth grade Scout’s fear of becoming pregnant because she had kissed a boy, to engage readers.
The highly anticipated novel is nowhere near as compelling as Lee’s classic and its weak, hurried plot distracts and confuses readers. While it is written as a standalone, Go Set A Watchman is ultimately more interesting when read as a companion to To Kill a Mockingbird because it introduces readers to a deeper understanding of the original.
