Newswise — “Go Set a Watchman,” the recently discovered manuscript examining the later lives of several of the same characters from Harper Lee’s 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was published July 14.
Already, some advance reviews have taken issue with the new book’s purported tarnishing of the otherwise sterling hero of “Mockingbird,” Atticus Finch. Lee wrote the “Watchman” manuscript prior to publishing the celebrated “Mockingbird,” but an editor suggested the young novelist take another crack at the story, looking at the characters at an earlier stage of development, resulting in an American classic that also became a much lauded film.
Lee’s newly published work paints Atticus, the white Alabama lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape in “Mockingbird,” as perhaps a man more of his time and place: the mid-century American South, where casual and overt racism were often the orders of the day.
The complexities of race and the South are the subjects of Creighton University College of Arts and Sciences professor Mary Helen Stefaniak’s own novel, “The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia” (2011). The novel is set in roughly the same time period as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and delves into a small Southern town’s struggles with race and righteousness, also through the eyes of a young girl.
Stefaniak, who wrote her novel partly as a response to “Mockingbird,” says her book approaches the nuances of racial identity in ways that Lee’s book sometimes eludes in the interest of making a lionized portrait of Atticus Finch. That portrayal may serve as an oversimplification of other characters, including the black man Atticus defends, Tom Robinson.
The advent of this latest Lee novel, Stefaniak said, may unsettle some fans of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but it may also create a franker dialogue, especially in a nation undergoing new Civil Rights struggles and engaging new conversations and confrontations on race.
“‘Go Set a Watchman’ may not be as good a novel as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” Stefaniak said. “But it does, perhaps, give a more complex and, thus, truer picture of its characters.”
To read more about Mary Helen Stefaniak and “The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia,” click here.
RSS