by Travis Covitz
This month, I re-read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee for the first time since my freshman year of high school (which overlapped with the first wave of Black Lives Matter uprisings). Mockingbird was written by Lee (a Southern white woman) in the early 1960s; it follows the girlhood of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who is white and the daughter of a lawyer, in Depression-era Alabama. A major plot point of the book is Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, defending a local Black man who has been charged with rape of a white woman. Atticus is posed as a noble white hero in contrast with the ‘backwards’ racists in the countryside. Reading in 2026, the juxtaposition of the police brutality in Ferguson and the lawfare in Mockingbird seems like it was just begging for commentary. But at my school in the Phoenix, Arizona suburbs, where we had a very small Black population, I have no memory of such a conversation. What I do remember is, at some point during the year, one of the few Black girls in my grade commented that the murder of Michael Brown echoed the murder of Trayvon Martin. I know that she saw the parallels between Scout’s fictional world and the world we found ourselves growing up in.
My mom has always been a huge fan of Mockingbird and the Finch family in particular. As the youngest in her family, my mom related heavily to Scout’s perspective as a young child surrounded by adults. Perhaps because of her connection with Scout, or perhaps just because of her own liberal white sympathies, my mom glorified Atticus as a paragon of virtue. I remember seeing a lot of discourse in 2020 about how white people preferred quoting this fictional white lawyer, instead of living Black people, to demonstrate their values of racial justice. My re-reading of Mockingbird was, in part, a desire to revisit the character of Atticus Finch and see just how valiant he really was. Was he a principled anti-racist or a white savior? I found myself thoroughly underwhelmed, but not surprised, with how Atticus actually behaves in the book. And then I read the sequel.
Go Set A Watchman takes place in that same small Alabama town, centered on that same Finch girl (who is now a woman), about two decades later. Scout is in her mid-twenties (actually very close to my current age) and visiting her hometown on a trip away from her life in New York City. She is forced to confront the imperfections in the moral characters of her father (Atticus) and lover (Hank), who have joined the local white Citizens Council in protest of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Watchman was only published in 2015, and takes place after the events of Mockingbird, but it is actually more interesting than a mere ‘sequel’. Lee wrote Watchman in the 1950s, as the first draft of this story, only for it to later be edited into the narrative we know as Mockingbird.
Reading Watchman greatly enriched my appreciation of Mockingbird – but I think that Watchman was only able to be so profound because of that decade of relationship I already had with the Mockingbird story. I felt that the loss of Atticus’ heroism, rather than a betrayal, was a very plausible continuation of the character. In fact, I think that character journey is an important one to read for white readers who, like the young Scout, saw Atticus as a perfect gentleman. In my experience, Mockingbird is used by liberal Americans to assuage their guilt over racism, by allowing them to reassure themselves that they’re ‘one of the good ones’. It paints a picture of racism as a personal problem rather than a political one. The subtextual rebukes to this narrative which I found in Watchman actually allowed me to more deeply appreciate the world that Lee built. By showing how a kind, honorable white man – who treats Black people as equals in daily life – can still feel so threatened by the idea of Black people in power that he organizes to prevent it, Watchman illustrates how racism is a political issue, not just a personal moral failing.
In Watchman, Scout is positioned as the moral hero in contrast to Atticus, but not necessarily enlightened, which I feel is the correct choice for the character. She is still learning the ways of the world, but we can see that she has deep moral convictions that ground her. If Scout had been written as perfect, it would have ruined the whole story, which is about coming-of-age and realizing that your heroes are only human. My revisiting of Lee’s work has been its own coming-of-age story, after all. Even though I generally appreciated the direction of Watchmen, I disagree with some of the political conclusions Lee offers. But this way in which I disagree with Scout paradoxically makes me relate to her even more. Just as her long-time deification of Atticus was confronted by a painful reality when Scout realizes she has her own moral positions, I had to realize my own values are based on the people I live and organize with – not just the books I’ve read.
If you remember reading Mockingbird, and especially if you remember quoting Atticus Finch, I would highly recommend Watchman. It might be painful, but I think you will be all the better for realizing that even the Finches have flaws – and wondering what actual anti-racism would look like.