Fifty-five years after the debut of her Southern novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee recently announced that she would be releasing a sequel to her famous novel called Go Set a Watchman. This summer, readers will be able to read from Scout’s perspective, except this time it is her point of view as an adult. Dr. Julia Eichelberger, an expert on Southern literature, talks about Harper Lee and her “new” novel.
Q: Why do you think people are so excited about Lee’s new novel?
A: I think people are excited because it’s about Scout, the narrator of Lee’s very popular “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Many of my students have read this book before coming to C of C. High school and middle school readers often love the Finch family—the six-year-old tomboy Scout, her brother Jem, and their widowed father Atticus. Even young readers can relate to Scout’s fascination with their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. All of us can appreciate Atticus’s final words to Scout, telling her that she can find goodness in “most people. . . when you finally see them.”
Q: What makes To Kill a Mockingbird so special?
A: Lee’s book is more than a young adult novel; much of the history and culture of the U. S. South is on display in fictional Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s. Almost every “southern” element is here: a small town where everyone knows each other’s business; farm families in abject poverty; legal and extralegal efforts to maintain white supremacy; the importance of acting like a “lady” or a “gentleman.” Each of these elements comes into play when Tom Robinson, a law-abiding African American man, is accused of raping a white woman.
Scout, a bookish child who’s already something of a misfit, is baffled and saddened by the events that unfold. Just as Huck Finn’s character did for Mark Twain, Scout’s ingénue character gives her creator a charming voice to express Lee’s critique of the laws, manners, and mores of Southern society. The novel is by no means a complete picture of the U. S. South—the well-educated Finch family occupies a position of privilege that none of them completely recognize, Lee’s African American characters are portrayed with less agency and independence than their historical counterparts actually possessed, and the novel’s poor whites are a convenient but problematic scapegoat for racism and for other “southern” troubles in which many others are also complicit. But these are some of the issues that make the novel so interesting to discuss and think about. Writing this makes me wish I had it on my syllabus this semester!
So of course I, too, am very eager to read “Go Set a Watchman,” the book that inspired its more famous prequel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I look forward to further insights on the South before, during, and after the civil rights era.
Julia Eichelberger is Marybelle Higgins Howe Professor of Southern Literature in the Department of English.