5/29/2024 10:50:46 PM

In the small town of Maycomb, Alabama lives a principled white man. He fights against racial injustice and guides his children like a gentle father. Created more than 50 years ago, this father-lawyer is one of the most beloved characters in American literature. A central figure in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’, Atticus is idolized by his daughter, Jean Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout.

Sharing a unique space in popular culture, ‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1961. The international accolade cemented Lee’s literary panache in the American canon. Stylized after Lee’s own father, Atticus throws light on Lee’s own relationship with her father. What’s confounding is the two images of Atticus in conflict with each other! When ‘Go Set a Watchman’ (2015) was published, Finch found contradiction in her idol. He is a member of an all-white Citizen Council set out to oppose integration. He was no longer the father she returned to. Her annual visit from New York City to small Maycomb was different and a reminder of her gaining a view of the outside world; a world beyond her original home she was once nestled in.

‘To Kill a Mocking Bird’ – a deeply moral, fair depiction of justice- is innocence, while ‘Go Set a Watchman’ is corrupted maturity, hardened by the years as one progresses through life. The former has young Atticus and Scout, set out to be changemakers, while their older versions seem to fall back in the comfort of conformity sheltered in tradition. As jarring it may sound to the readers, the shift focuses on the life, culture, history and politics of the South. It makes the reader re-examine Harper’s own life. Perhaps, his father Amassa Coleman Lee has inspired both versions of Atticus.

We witness the admiration. We witness the crisis. Jean’s depth of feeling for the father figure is a testimony to her defence of Atticus who is still not neck-deep with the extremists. Finch’s look for a home is far from over. Rural Alabama is looking for rejuvenation.


IMAGE SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA