I remember reading a book called White Guilt in college. It’s been a long
time since I’ve read it, but the basic views expressed in it were that many
Americans try to overly make up for the racial sins of the past—sometimes to a
fault. You had to read all of it, pay attention, and listen to what the author
was really saying. There were quite a few students in the class, however, who
hated the book because they said it made white people look bad, etc. I won’t go
into all of that, because it’s not my main point. My main point is this: I
later talked with the professor about it, and he expressed that those students
had gotten so defensive about feeling attacked that they had missed the point
of the book entirely, much to his disappointment.
This is what I feel has happened
for Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a
Watchman. About a dozen people have asked me to express my thoughts on the
novel, so here I go:
The controversy has been that Atticus
is a racist in the new book. Everywhere I go lately, I hear much discord and
disgust towards the book—all from people who haven’t read it. I’ve talked to
many friends and even strangers about it, and so far, only one person had read
it. It has only been out for a little over a week, yet so many individuals have
shut their minds and will hear no more. Almost all of those people are getting
their information second-hand. They haven’t paid attention long enough to
understand what the author is actually trying to say.
Without giving any spoilers, this
book isn’t actually about race as much as the hype makes it out to be. It’s not
like To Kill a Mockingbird in that
area. It’s about knocking down childhood idols and learning to think for
ourselves. Scout, or as she’s called in this one, Jean Louise, actually is very
similar to those who are currently criticizing the book. She sees something she
doesn’t understand, but thinks that she does, and she quite literally freaks
out—repeatedly. I’ve never seen such tantrums from a grown woman. She then
shuts her mind and her eyes to any reason or explanation—just like the critics
who refuse to read the book solely on the basis of what they’ve “heard” about
it.
The novel does represent the two
sides of the race battle, but I don’t think that’s exactly what Harper Lee was
trying to express. In a lot of ways, this book is a late coming of age story.
Scout is 26, but she’s still got a lot to learn. There were definitely moments
where I related to her, where I understood her struggle to realize that her
father is a flawed human being, that he’s old…that he won’t be around forever.
I related to her most, I think when
her Uncle Jack (Atticus’ brother) said this to her:
“…now you, Miss, born with your
own conscious, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your
father’s. As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you
confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart,
and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so
few mistakes, but he makes ‘em like all of us. You were an emotional cripple,
leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that your answers would
always be his answers.”
Maybe I’m
a little bias towards this book because I, same age as Scout, have just
realized that I too have done this. I lost my great grandmother last year, and
it wasn’t until she passed that I realized that I had put her on a pedestal—that
I had, as Uncle Jack says, “Confused” her with God. I refused to see her flaws
and her failings. I idolized her. And when she died, it was more than just a
normal human death to me. It was as if God had died.
And I think this was what Atticus
was trying to break in Scout. She needed to see that he was a human man, flawed
like the rest of us. And she needed to see that she had her own mind, and if
her views didn’t line up with her father's, well…that was alright. She had to
learn to make her own choices and stand for them.
And if you’re still hung up on the
race relations, take a look at this: Scout looks up the word “bigot” in the
story and reads aloud, “Noun. One obstinately or intolerably devoted to his own
church, party, belief, or opinion.”
I won’t say anything more about the
book, because as sainted LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Read it
for yourself. Or not. Just be careful of how intolerant you are towards a novel
you haven’t read. Or else, you might end up sounding a lot like that dictionary
definition…
