Go Set a Watchman

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Whether you’ve read this recently published “sequel” to To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, you’ve no doubt already read about the “ugly.”  Yes, Atticus Finch, the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird, who defends a black man accused of raping a white woman in the 1930s, is exposed as a segregationist and a racist in the 1950s.  Some have deplored and mourned this toppling of the white Southern hero; others have defended Go Set a Watchman’s representation of white supremacy in the Civil Rights era South as much more realistic than its well known, popular predecessor.

In either case, the novel, actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird, offers a historical explanation for the difference in character.  It seems that in the segregated South of the 1930s it was perfectly possible for a white man to be on reasonably good terms with his black servants (young Scout was raised by a black maid, as well as her single father, after her mother’s early death) and other African Americans, since in those days “Negroes” knew their place and mostly stayed in it.

With the rise of the NAACP and the Civil Rights movement, however, white paternalists such as Atticus Finch were threatened enough to assert their racial “superiority” and resist all efforts to achieve integration and equal rights of the races.

This ugliness, however realistic, is countered by the outrage of 26-year-old Jean Louise (Scout), when she discovers a racist pamphlet in her father’s desk and witnesses his attendance at a Citizens’ Council meeting, which is hosting a virulently racist speaker.  Jean Louise’s horror when she discovers her father’s racism, her willingness to confront him, as well as her boyfriend (who also attended the meeting), and her support for Civil Rights could be considered the “good” that somehow redeems the novel’s ugliness.  At least that is one way to read it.

There is another example of ugliness, however, at the end of the novel that goes unredeemed, and another way to read the novel as a whole that may disappoint those wishing to somehow salvage Harper Lee’s reputation.  More of that later.

What about the “good”?  For all the talk about race, no reviewers I’ve read have mentioned the feminist plot of Jean Louise rebelling, not only against the small-minded racism of her hometown and her family, but also against the traditional small town expectations for how women should dress, speak, and act.

Go Set a Watchman takes the form of a coming of age narrative in which the protagonist is a woman, who, after graduating from college, has left the South and moved to New York City.  She returns for a family visit some time after the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education, which ruled segregation unconstitutional.  She wears slacks instead of dresses, talks back to her aunt, and resists attempts by her father’s law clerk to get her to marry him and settle down into a small town, Southern, domestic role.

As is typical in a coming of age story, Jean Louise encounters “evil” in the form of the racist pamphlet and speaker that her father and boyfriend seem to be supporting.  As in such stories Jean Louise’s shock and outrage at the evil in the world can lead her to cynicism and despair or into some kind of healthy maturation, in which she comes to terms with and makes her peace with the world as it is without sacrificing her own values and principles.

Although Jean Louise, having strung her boyfriend along, finally and firmly rejects his offer of marriage, she does make peace with her father.  It is not clear whether she will return to New York or stay in Maycomb and make her peace with the small town provincialism that she despises.

Her Uncle Jack encourages her to stay, not to “join em,” probably not to “beat em,” but possibly to improve them with her more enlightened point of view.  Paraphrasing “Melbourne” (presumably Queen Victoria’s prime minister), Uncle Jack says, “the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong.”

Uncle Jack emerges as the wise, if somewhat addled, sage, advising Jean Louise, “…it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days.”  Perhaps it is the same kind of maturity that enables us all to put up with the racist uncle who always seems to show up for Thanksgiving.

In any case, it is no doubt healthier for Jean Louise to come to some semblance of peaceful terms with her family and community, even if she doesn’t stay there, than to become isolated and estranged from them.

Scattered through this coming of age narrative are three flashbacks to Jean Louise’s childhood, episodes that reinforce the youthful innocence from which she must “fall,” as in all coming of age stories.  These flashbacks, taken by themselves, are hilariously entertaining, though not necessarily well integrated with the narrative as a whole.  Reading them, one can understand why her editor suggested she rewrite the manuscript from Scout’s point of view as a young child.

So much for the “good.”

The “bad” is simply the rough draft quality of the text, structurally, as suggested above, as well as in content and language.  For one thing, 26 seems a bit old to be discovering that her father is not the paragon of virtue she had thought him as a child.  Most of us experience this disillusionment with, not only our parents, but also our family and community, during our late teens or early twenties.  It doesn’t seem very credible that Jean Louise doesn’t discover her father’s racism, even if it was more paternalistic than aggressive, at an earlier age.

When she does confront her boyfriend and father, she is far more virulent than one might expect.  Having just heard the Sunday preacher speak from the text of Isaiah 21: 6 (“For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth”), Jean Louise melodramatically declares that she needed someone to “set a watchman” to warn her of the bigotry lying in hiding beneath the moralistic façade of her father, family, and community.  Having grown up in the South, surely she can’t be that shocked to find Southern racism and even the KKK lapping at her own door.

The structure of the narrative is also flawed.  The plot doesn’t really begin to thicken until half way through, when Jean Louise discovers that pamphlet, and, as suggested above the flashbacks are not well integrated.  Much of the second half is taken up with long inner and outer monologues and diatribes, as Jean Louise confronts herself and others.  Uncle Jack, a Faulkneresque eccentric, tops all with his meandering, barely coherent, orations.

It is Uncle Jack that calls Jean Louise “Childe Roland,” quoting parts of Robert Browning’s poem, lifting Jean Louise’s coming of age to the mythic level of a hero’s quest narrative.

But it is also Uncle Jack who, shockingly, slaps Jean Louise near the end, drawing blood and then plying her with whisky to ease the pain.  The ugly racism in the book is countered by Jean Louise’s outrage, but this ugly act of violence is presented uncritically.  It is presented as literally slapping some sense into an irate Jean Louise, and, more shockingly, she accepts it.  The only thing lacking is her actually saying, “Thanks, I needed that.”

After this act of violence Jean Louise suddenly calms down, accepts her uncle’s advice to make peace, apologizes to her father, and seems to resign herself to the moral imperfection of her family, community, and the world in general.

This resolution is consistent with the coming of age story, but another, uglier, way to read the ending is as Harper Lee’s apologist treatment of Southern racism.  Atticus attended a KKK meeting, not to participate, but to see who was under those hoods.  He attended the Citizen’s Council meeting and listened to the racist speaker in order to maintain working relationships with his fellow citizens.  He had the pamphlet in his desk in order to study the rhetoric and reasoning of the segregationists.  He holds racist opinions, but is still a kind and forgiving father.  Hank, as an up-and-coming lawyer who started out as “trash,” cannot risk his upward social mobility by bucking the powers that be.

Is this realism or is it apologism?  You decide.

In any case, Go Set a Watchman is not of the same caliber as To Kill a Mockingbird.  While there’s some “good,” there’s more “bad,” and a lot more “ugly” than in the well-known classic.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn I

Recent controversy over The Help by Kathryn Stockett has reminded me of the continuing controversy over The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

It seems reasonable to me that a novel by a white author representing African American characters and experience would be subjected to critical scrutiny. It also seems reasonable to expect that a white writer will depict that experience through a white lens, just as black writers will portray white characters and experience through a black lens. Does that mean that whites should not write about blacks and vice versa? I hope not. Even if that means white novels will bear vestiges, at the very least, of racism and black novels will exhibit prejudice toward whites.

One problem of American publishing history, however, in a white dominated culture, is that black writers have had to get past white editors and publishers while white writers have rarely been screened by black publishing filters. As a result, historically, more racism in white novels has been published than has the critique of white supremacy in black novels. It should be no surprise that black readers will react more strongly to and scrutinize more closely the way their experience is depicted by white writers.

Instead of being hypersensitive and resentful, white readers and writers might want to pay attention. They could learn something.

For the most part, though, criticism of Huck Finn as a racist novel has been met with furious defensiveness. Mark Twain, after all, is an American literary hero and Huck Finn has been considered his “masterpiece” (interesting word choice). To label Twain and his novel as “racist” seems unpatriotic at best and downright sacrilegious at worst.

How could Huck Finn be racist? The escaped slave, Jim, is a sympathetic character and the white Southerners are mostly unsympathetic objects of ridicule and satire. But, is an anti-slavery message the same as an anti-racist message? Can an abolitionist still be a white supremacist? Slavery had been abolished some twenty years before the 1884 publication of Huck Finn, but racism continued to run rampant. Does the anti-slavery message absolve the novel of racism?

Defenders argue that Jim is not only sympathetic but humanized as a man equally deserving of freedom as the white runaway, Huck. Huck, himself, must struggle with and overcome his own conditioned racism in order, not only to help Jim escape, but also to bond with him as a companion and fellow seeker of freedom. Some even see Jim as a father figure to Huck, putting Jim in a psychologically superior position.

Detractors counter that (1) Jim is hardly represented as “equal” to Huck, (2) even if he were, then he, a grown man with a wife and children, is being equated with a child, thus reinforcing a common stereotype of blacks as “childlike,” and (3) while Jim may be allowed moments of genuine humanity, he is largely portrayed as a caricature based on popular minstrel show “Jim Crow” stereotypes. Critics also question Huck’s moral progress and human bond with Jim, given the way Huck joins with Tom Sawyer in tormenting Jim when he is held captive at the Phelps farm at the end of the novel.

Defenders counter that, after all, how much moral progress can you expect a fourteen-year-old boy to make in such a short time span? Just the fact that Huck does have those pangs of conscience over Jim’s treatment is anti-racist enough. And, while Twain may not have completely transcended his own white supremacist and racist environment, he went further in challenging that ideology than any other white writer of the 19th century. (I would submit that Herman Melville, writing before abolition, went further than Twain did, though his subtlety in Benito Cereno, for example, would have escaped many readers.)

I wonder if the defenders and detractors are both right. I wonder if Twain himself was torn between challenging the morality of his white readers and placating them in order to promote his own popularity and book sales. The result is a novel that promises much in terms of an anti-racist message but falls far short of full delivery.

Van Wyck Brooks, in his critical study The Ordeal of Mark Twain (1933), claims that, just as this iconic author had two names, Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain, so he had a conflicted psyche, one that aspired to be, on one hand, a serious artist using satire to critique his contemporary society, and on the other hand, a popular humorist, using folksiness to endear and promote himself to the reading public. Brooks traces this split throughout Twain’s career and argues that his increasing cynicism and misanthropy was the result of his own self-hatred for having “sold out” his highest and best artistic and moral promise. If Brooks is right, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is but one episode in the sad psychological story of our revered American author Mark Twain.

This commentary is not meant to reflect on The Help. That will have to wait for a future blog post.