(Let me warn you, there are spoilers galore!

If you want to read Go Set a

Watchman and judge for yourself, stop right here. If you are reading Go Set A
Watchman because you want to read a best-seller and have never heard of the
author before, I suggest you look up a tiny black book called To Kill A Mockingbird
first)
I read Go Set A Watchman with much trepidation. I had ranted and raved about its
publication since the news first came out, which intensified after reading the initial
reviews and the first chapter on The Guardian. My expectations from the book
were bare minimum, but when I opened the orange cover with its not so subtle
allusion to Ms. Lees earlier work, I was hoping to be proved wrong.
I have never been sadder at being proved right.
Go Set A Watchman was written before To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee had
taken the draft to her publisher, who suggested that she revisit the book from a
different angle. The rest was history.
The draft of Go Set A Watchman was discovered by her lawyer and published
amidst much fanfare and howls from Mockingbird loyalists. Videos showing a
smiling Harper Lee posing with a copy of the book were quickly released to stem
the damage - look, the author wants it out, why should you not? Never mind that
the video showed an eighty year old suffering from dementia smiling uncertainly
at the camera, in sharp contrast to her earlier, more lucid interviews, where she
says that she never wants to publish another word. But why dredge old history
when the author is clearly in sync with what the publishers want! Onward with the
media blitzkrieg then!
It worked! People lined up overnight to buy copies - such mass hysteria for a book
was reminiscent of Harry Potter and will probably be repeated only when George
R R Martin offers his next tale of bloody succession. The Chiefs of PenguinRandom House UK clinked their glasses of bubbly and settled back to the soothing
cha-ching of cash registers across the globe.
Go Set A Watchman revisits Maycomb County, Alabama thirty years after To Kill A
Mockingbird. Scout, now Jean Louise, is a grown woman living in New York and we
travel with her back home to Atticus, Cal and Aunt Alexandra. We meet Hank
again, who is now a budding lawyer and Atticus protge, who handles his cases,
drives his car and hopes to marry his daughter. Jem, we learn, has died of a heart
attack and Dill is in Europe. Atticus Finch is seventy, arthritic and lives with his
sister Alexandra, who is still trying to mould Scout into a lady.
Maycomb has changed too. The Blacks now own cars and along with it, have
inherited the habit of drunk driving at breakneck speeds, have their own schools
and a protector in the form of the NAACP, a North American organisation who
want equal rights for all, special privileges for none. The NAACP want suffrage for
the coloured population and through this, to dissolve the unspoken rules of
segregation which have governed the South. And Maycomb was simmering again.

We are introduced to this new Maycomb and these older, grown-up characters
through the eyes of Jean Louise, who has a faint resemblance to six year old
Scout. She is afraid to drive a car and of machines in general - something which
Scout would have scoffed at. But thankfully, she still battles against Maycombs
(and Alexandras) norms of femininity and still has enough pluck to follow her
father into a city council meeting when she has been specifically asked not to.
I was reminded of the seminal scene from To Kill A Mockingbird, when Scout and
Jem go to their fathers office at night only to find it surrounded by an angry mob.
Scout recognises her neighbours and rushes forward to talk to them. One by one,
the mob breaks down to reveal individuals shamed by the realisation of what they
had become. Maycomb discovered its conscience that night through a six year
olds prattle.
Here too, Scout follows Atticus and Hank into the courthouse and hides in the
same balcony from where she had heard her father defend a black man thirty
years ago. This time, she sees Atticus sitting with the cream of Maycombs White
supremacists, nodding acceptance to their tirade against the NAACPs
movements. The adult Scout runs out as the pedestal on which she had placed
Atticus shatters. How could you calm an angry mob when your father is a part of
it?
At this point in the story, generations of Atticus admirers dissolve in angry tears.
The story weaves on to show that the NAACPs entrance into the South has
widened the segregation, not reduced it. Blacks and Whites trust each other less
now - Whites feel threatened with an imminent Black intrusion into their schools
and government institutions and in defence, increase the already stringent code
of Us and Them. Atticus too is a part of this.
While she is still trying to digest the scene at the courthouse, Jean Louise realises
the main difference between her and Maycomb - she was born colour-blind. But
Scout was not born colour-blind, Scout was raised to be so - by a white man who
believed in equal rights for all, special privileges for none and a black woman who
loved her like her own. When the same man says, Honey, you dont understand
that the Negros down here are still in their childhood as people. They have made
terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but theyre far from it
yet., my heart, like Scouts, broke a little.
The book tries to defend this turn of its iconic lead by making his a champion not
of the Whites, but of the South. NAACP is a North American construct, just another
bitter pill that the South is forced to swallow. Atticus is against this infringement of
the Southern way of life and if it means siding with the racist council, so be it. If it
means defending Calpurnias grandson in court not because he cares for him or
Cal, but because he does not want the NAACP funded lawyers to get in on the
case, so be it.

As Uncle Jack says, ...the Klan can parade around all it wants, but when it starts
bombing and beating people, dont you know who will be the first to try and stop
it? The law is what he lives by. Hell do his best to prevent someone from beating
up somebody else... So essentially, Atticus Finch is a man who will eat with the
Klan but will not kill with them. So much better.
The character of Uncle Jack seems to be designed to placate both Scout and angry
readers: ...now you, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line,
fastened it like a barnacle onto your fathers. As you grew up, you confused your
father with God. You never saw him as a man, with a mans heart and a mans
failings...
Scout understands. The reader, does not.
Yes, like Scout, I too, have fastened my soul with Atticuss like a barnacle. He is an
aspiration, a hope that if we tried to be a little more like him, this dysfunctional
world of ours can be made better. Unlike Scout, I refuse to take him off the
pedestal.
I will read To Kill A Mockingbird again. For me, Harper Lee has only written one
book in her life.