Etwas wenig Story und viel (Rassen-)Politik. Ich mag aber die humorvolle Schreibweise sehr! ( )

Written in a slow, simple and dated style from the point of view of Scout, who is now grown up (early 20s). Couldn't get past p.75. Nothing much has happened yet, as we are slowly acquainted with what happened to everyone in the intervening years. ( )

Still deciding what I think about this one.

Some spoilers, though not a lot of detail

Several reviewers, whose opinions of this book were not favorable--and even negative, apparently do not quite understand what life in the South was and is like for both whites and blacks.

The book begins with Jean Louise (Scout) Finch makes her annual pilgrimage home to Maycomb, Alabama from New York City by train. She is excited to come back to her childhood, though with the death of her brother Jem two years before, nothing is quite the same at it was. There is an ice cream parlor where the old house stood, Calpurnia has retired and gone to live with her people on the black side of town, and Scout's father, Atticus, in his seventies, has more bad days than good, afflicted with the rheumatism.

While Atticus' sister has come to live with him, and his brother, the eccentric doctor who only reads Victorian novels but is much more intelligent and wise than he lets on, lives in town, Jean Louise is still made to feel that she should come home and take care of Atticus, and in the meantime get married into an old respectable Maycomb family (and not the long-time friend and "boyfriend"). She has resisted, not because she doesn't want to do those things, but because she doesn't want anyone to tell her to do those things.

In the course of this story, Jean Louise eventually comes to realize that her father is human, that the way of life that she grew up with was, while not a lie, certainly not the truth. This is a picture of a woman who has to come to terms with having had a liberal upbringing while living in a very conservative state. She is a woman who has clung to her childhood fantasies of who her father is, who her friends are, and what her town represents. In Go Set a Watchman, an adult Jean Louise Finch grows up.

For fans of To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman is definitely written in the same style. There were many questions of the book's authenticity because of it's recent controversy, but regardless of this or whether Ms. Lee actually wanted to have it published, it is still an entertaining and thoroughly thoughtful read. The reader gets a sense of the Old South, just after World War II but before the extreme racial tensions of the 1960's. That was a time of another "Red Scare," of Communists hiding behind every tree and recruiting the black population to their cause behind the backs of whites in their communities. It was a time when people were becoming disenchanted with their government. No longer was the President of the United States revered--that seemed to die with FDR. No longer were people able to trust their government, what with Senator Joseph McCarthy in his waning years as a witch-hunter. And to top it off, it appeared that the Supreme Court was going the way of Abraham Lincoln and totally disregarding states' rights with their laws requiring desegregation. Jean Louise herself finds fault in the way the Supreme Court handled the desegregation filing by the NAACP, stating that it was in violation of the Tenth Amendment, which says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Despite her misgivings, she believes that the law had to be made. That desegregation would eventually happen, though it needed to happen in its own time, when everyone, whites and blacks, were ready. Her disenchantment with Atticus comes from finding out that he agreed with her on the one hand, but completely disagreed with her stance that it needed to occur at all.

This is a really difficult book to come to terms with. For those who live in the South, both black and white, this certainly hits home. These same tensions described here are the same as we are feeling today. Is it a coincidence that the book was released during a time of racial turmoil all over the country? Perhaps, but perhaps not. We may never know.

( )

I got lost in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, so I had to check out Go Set A Watchman. Go Set A Watchman didn’t hit me as hard as To Kill A Mockingbird, but I loved learning what happened to Jean Louis Finch, since she was the star of the show.

She returns home, after living in New York City, seeing Maycomb, Alabama in a new light. Sure, she has gotten older, but she has been away from the small town life. She had left behind her brother, father, and Henry, who patiently waited for her to return, believing they would be wed.

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

Jean Louis has done a lot of growing up, but her return gives her many life lessons, showing her that things are not always as they appear to be. Her father has never tried to influence her, and he does not try now. She will become her own person.

Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee did not hit me as hard as To Kill A Mockingbird, but I found so many words of wisdom in the pages, that I found myself nodding my head and thinking, well said. I feel both books should be must reads in English and History classes, for all high schools, North, South, East, and West. ( )