‘The night was dark, no father was there / the child was wet with dew / the mire was deep, and the child did weep / and away the vapour flew.’
These lines of William Blake in ‘The Little Boy Lost’ from Songs of Innocence tell of a significant moment of maturing which is common to human experience.
The ‘vapour’ here is that essence of naivety and childhood ignorance which inevitably evaporates at the disturbing realisation that the father is not the perfect protector he was once thought to be. It was blissfully comfortable to live in the cloud of that vapour, but it kept the child from growing up. Without it, the child sees the reality of his situation, finding himself in a strange darkness where it is difficult to walk, at least at first. These lines of Blake’s befit the experience of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, the 26-year-old protagonist of Harper Lee’s recently released second novel, Go Set A Watchman.
Sixty years of creation
Released in July amid a maelstrom of publicity, Go Set A Watchman was a novel 60 years in the making. Stories differ, but the facts seem to be that this novel is the predecessor of 1960’s To Kill A Mockingbird, in which the now-legendary figure of justice, Atticus Finch, counter-culturally defends an innocent black man in a court case that shook the racist bones of the small, fictional Alabama town of Maycomb.
When Lee took the manuscript of Go Set A Watchman to her prospective publisher, they asked for the backstory, and To Kill A Mockingbird was born – and published. Go Set A Watchman, is, then, the story Lee originally intended to tell. Early reviews sprang up all over social media before I’d even got my hands on a copy – ‘Atticus is a racist in his old age!’ they exclaimed with tones of shock and betrayal, perhaps rightfully so, considering how this new story tarnishes the gleaming silver of a name that has become synonymous with fairness.
Searching for labels
We live in a world of labels, distinguishing ourselves from one another by the label we hold most dear. So much of the narrative around us is directed by peoples’ searching for and assertion of the label they most identify with, and the space for labels must be ever-expanding, making room for those that haven’t existed previously.
From these labels certain sets of beliefs, values and passions are expected to flow. So it’s no wonder that when Atticus’ now grown-up daughter, Jean Louise, finds him giving an ear to those who are pro-segregation, she experiences a tearing apart from her childish assumption that her father is a flawless gentleman. She instantly brands him a racist, and frustratingly spends the next 80 pages agonising over this revelation, all the while refusing Atticus the chance to explain himself.
Go Set A Watchman surprisingly turns out to be a coming-of-age story, as the vapour of Jean Louise’s innocence flies away, leaving her standing alone in the night.
Jean Louise at first, like those early reviews of the novel, audaciously labels her father a racist, lacking the courage to listen to him, to consider his standpoint. She, like so many of the reviews, wants a paint-by-numbers understanding of her father, but Lee has crafted here a character and viewpoint of complex nuance and tone.
One sinner relying on another
As Jean Louise grapples with realising how she has held Atticus on an impossible pedestal for so long, her Uncle Jack tells her: ‘every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscience.’ She experiences the bereavement of her old self, including her old impression of her father, which is a consequence of her unquestioningly looking to him to be her moral compass. He is not able to be so, and the fallout is a consequence of one sinner relying upon the well-lived life of another sinner in order to live uprightly.
There’s only one man who can bear the weight of perfect morality, and he will never betray or shame those who love him. Jean Louise finds herself alone and exposed in the mire of life, abandoned by her own notion of a perfect father, but there is one Father who calls all his sons and daughters to hide themselves in him.
