The slender plot of Watchman hangs on this disclosure. This is the dilemma faced not only by readers of Watchman, but by Jean Louise (Scout) Finch, who returns home during the civil rights movement to find the father she thought despised racism defending segregation. If we have grown up admiring an idealised father figure like Atticus, incorporating him into our value system, then the sense of betrayal at finding him espousing immoral views may be real, and profound. This process is amplified when the story converges with readers’ own sense of personal development. Because it’s internalised, reading closes the gap of detachment we feel watching others enact a story characters we only imagine entwine with our own thoughts, histories and perceptions.
The devotion that readers can feel to imaginary characters is a strange and wonderful thing, at the heart of the cognitive mystery that is the reading process.
The question of whether it may do any good morally is more complicated, and circles around the outrage so many readers report at discovering Atticus Finch, that beloved imaginary Abraham Lincoln of the civil rights movement, spouting racist bile. The answer to whether Watchman is any good aesthetically is simple: not very. There’s a reason Mockingbird is so loved: it is charming, beautifully controlled and heart-warming. I f we accept for argument’s sake that Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s premature sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, has been intentionally published by its author, we are left with only two significant questions, both about value: is it any good, and does it do any good? Mockingbird indisputably did quite a lot of good, and it’s very good at what it sets out to do.
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