I read To Kill a Mockingbird as a high-school student (and read it again and again and yet again), enthralled, like the rest of my class (it was prescribed reading for us for the Indian School Certificate Examination), by the magic world conjured up by Jean Louise (Scout) Finch through her narrative about life in the provincial town of Maycomb in Deep South, USA, in the 1930s. This was a world in which, despite the constitutive parameters of racism, right was eventually might, a world dominated, above all, by Scout’s lawyer-father, Atticus Finch, who lived his own life and taught his two children to live theirs by the dictum,
“...before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
In keeping with his ethics of conviction as against the ethics of convenience, Atticus had taken on the difficult, if not impossible, task of defending a black man charged with the rape of a white woman, much to the chagrin of many of the town’s population. But the magic of Scout’s world which we, as school students, did not attempt, or even want, to dispel, derived from the fact that it blunted racism’s sharp edge by pushing the agents of hatred to the margins of society.
Thus the hardcore racists within the pages of the book are people like the Ewells, poor white trash whom all detest, or eccentric old ladies such as Mrs Henry Lafayette Dubose, whom most avoid. Almost everybody else that Scout interacts with or knows, from Uncle Jack to Miss Maudie Atkinson to Judge Taylor is a nice guy, with hearts in the proper place and sound moral instincts. In other words, too much whitewash and too little effort to negotiate the black truths of the Jim Crow era in America mars Harper Lee’s first novel. After all, the story might be told by a child, but it is not being told to children!
What I like about Go Set a Watchman, the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, on the other hand, is that, like the character of Jean Louise Finch in it, it is a story which has come of age. It has, by and large, dispensed with sentimental make believe and liberal pretensions that mere walking around in the other’s shoes can help one understand the other better.
Coming back home from New York on her “fifth annual trip”, Jean Louise discovers, to her horror, that racism is now at the center of the world she was nurtured in, indeed embodied in some of the persons she loves the most. This is the world of the 1950s, of white backlash against growing black self-assertion, of combative citizens’ councils (modern versions of Ku Klux Klan chapters) and dyed-in-the-wool nigger-haters. Her childhood idol, the Atticus Finch whom she hero-worshipped, has changed, changed utterly, and speaks the language of states’ rights in repudiation, along with many a like-minded Southerner, of alleged Federal intervention in the matter of race relations. The 1954 Supreme Court verdict in favour of school integration is a particularly offensive red rag for the Southern bulls. What would happen to their cherished way of life if the blacks were to assume positions of power?
“...What would happen if all the Negroes in the South were given full civil rights? I’ll tell you ... Would you want your state governments run by people who don’t know how to run ‘em’? Zeebo would probably be the Mayor of Maycomb. Would you want someone of Zeebo’s capability to handle the town’s money? ... We are outnumbered, you know.’’
(Do we not hear familiar resonances of anti-caste reservation opinions in India?)
Needless to say, Atticus’ views find more strident echoes in those of more red-necked Maycombites like Grady O’ Hanlon who “quit his job to devote himself full time to the preservation of segregation.” Clearly, benevolent paternalism from the “master-race” is no longer in vogue. How can it be otherwise since their erstwhile “children” refuse to be “parented” by them anymore, and seek, instead, to determine their own destinies?’
What is most, disquieting, however, is that, till the end of the novel, we, as readers, are never quite clear about where our dear Scout (or her author) stand on this issue, shocked though she seems to be by developments in Maycomb. I cite an extract from a conversation between Scout and her would-be partner, Henry Clinton.
‘‘...Something that looked like a giant black bee whooshed by them and careered around the curve ahead. She sat up. startled, “What was that?”
“Carload of Negroes.”
“Mercy, what do they think they are doing?”
“That’s the way they assert themselves these days,” Henry said. “They’ve got enough money to buy used cars, and they get out on the highway like ninety-to-nothing. They’re a public menace.”
“Driver’s licences?”
“Not many. No insurance, either”.
“Golly what if something happens?”
“It’s just too sad.”
Perhaps its plot is not as riveting as that of To Kill a Mockingbird, but Go Set a Watchman surely makes us cognizant of some white lies spoken by Harper Lee in its prequel.