At twenty-six, Jean Louise Finch comes home to Maycomb, Alabama for a two-week visit with her adored father, Atticus. He’s seventy-two now, quite crippled with arthritis but still mentally sharp and practicing law. In Scout’s mind as in the minds of readers who read and loved To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is the perfect father as well as a fair, courageous, and honorable man. He is the archetype of the parent we wish we had and the person we wish to be. His character has achieved mythic status.
But Scout’s world is shaken when she overhears his racist, ungenerous and patronizing remarks made at a citizen council meeting. She is devastated and made physically ill by the thought that she could have been so blind to his true colors. She feels betrayed by everyone in Maycomb, everyone she trusted.
“…You confused your father with God.”
Some of the remarks I’ve read regarding the book are critical of Atticus’s words and beliefs. Readers themselves perhaps feel betrayed by what they perceive as a failing in this father they have come to know and love. Their hero didn’t live up to their expectations and has toppled off the pedestal. Hmmm.
Harper Lee is under no obligation to the reader with regards to Atticus’s character. It is fiction, after all. The Atticus in Watchman is more complex and certainly a man of his time and place. And isn’t it also consistent with normal human development that it’s not until her mid-twenties that a somewhat naive Scout comes to terms with the reality of her father and not just the myth she idolized as a child? Our parents are human, not divine. The world is not black and white. Perhaps we are uncomfortable with the same issues as Scout. Perhaps this is our own coming-of-age story as well as hers.
Well-done, Miss Lee.
Lorie Smith Schaefer 
I’ve heard so much about this book. I don’t think I would idolize my father. I just wish I’d had one.
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Sorry. Did you at least have a father – like character on your life? Granddad? Uncle? Someone to show you how a good man behaves? I think it would be hard to go out into the world without some reference point by which to judge.
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Nice review, Lorie. I haven’t decided yet whether to read this book. I did so love Mockingbird!
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Well, since it’s neither a prequel nor a sequel, it’s hard to place it within the Mockingbird context. It’s much more a father-daughter story. And some un-politically correct views are expressed.
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Well said, Ms. Schaefer,
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Thank you.
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I just finished this book and your review mirrored my thoughts, though your’s were more organized and coherent. Now I’m thinking of rereading To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Thank you, Janet. I thought of you (in the best possible way) when I read Scout’s misadventure with the falsies. It reminded me of stories you told.
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Just finished this and I feel a lot like Scout. We’ve idolized Atticus for decades and as you say, he’s not a god, he’s just a man. Damn. Suddenly I have to grow up, too.
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It reminded me of when I briefly dated a Japanese guy and my folks had a fit. Told me I couldn’t see him any more. Ironically, his family had been here longer than mine. I was so disappointed in them. It broke my heart a little.
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I haven’t read the book, but from the reviews I’ve read it sounds like she’s captured something true about a strain of polite Southern racism of that time.
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Exactly. Uncomfortably true.
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And I wonder if that’s what’s upset some people–that discomfort.
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