48 pages • 1 hour read
Harper LeeGo Set A Watchman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Jean Louise Finch leaves New York for her annual visit to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama. She expects her father, Atticus, to pick her up from the train station, but the 72-year-old lawyer’s rheumatoid arthritis has prevented him from driving. Instead, she is greeted with a kiss by his protégé, Henry “Hank” Clinton. Hank is also Jean Louise’s suitor during her annual two-week visits. In the car, Hank proposes. Louise internally acknowledges that she cares for him and that he would give her an easy life, but she also believes that marriage to him would lead to an eventual affair with the man she would one day find that she “should have” married. Jean Louise is unwilling to cause Hank the heartache of putting them in such a position and therefore rejects his proposal. Despite his frustrations with her refusal, Hank continues to appreciate her sense of humor. The two engage in friendly banter.
Chapter 2 Summary
Jean Louise makes it to her father’s home, where he lives with his sister, Alexandra. The two welcome her warmly, but her aunt chides her for her clothing choices. Jean Louise points out that whether she dresses nicely or poorly, the townsfolk will find a way to use it as a reason to have a bad opinion of her. Atticus forces her to apologize for picking a fight with her aunt. The family discusses how much news she gets about their events in New York. They briefly mention the NAACP and the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case. When Hank confirms their next date, Jean Louise asks if she can wear slacks. When he answers in the negative, Aunt Alexandra praises him for the answer.
Chapter 3 Summary
Jean Louise reflects on her aunt, Alexandra, an old-fashioned woman whom Jean Louise considers to be the “last of her kind” (28). With her concrete, old-fashioned ideas about gender, class, and family duty, Aunt Alexandra is vocal in her disapproval of Jean Louise’s lifestyle and decisions, leading to clashes between the two Finch women. Jean Louise finds many of her rebukes to be hurtful as a small part of her believes the barbs her aunt hurls at her. Still, Jean Louise appreciates her aunt for her “sole” act of kindness in moving in with Atticus after Jem, Jean Louise’s brother, died, Calpurnia, the family’s cook, retired; and Atticus’s rheumatoid arthritis worsened.
Aunt Alexandra updates Jean Louise on Hank’s latest achievements, and Jean Louise takes the opportunity to mention the possibility of marrying him. Despite believing that Jean Louise should move home and settle down, Aunt Alexandra is against the idea. She urges caution and, when pressed, admits that her disapproval for Hank is based upon her belief that he is “white trash,” firmly announcing that Finches do not marry trash. When Hank arrives to pick up Jean Louise for their date, she holds him close and considers how likely she is to marry him despite Aunt Alexandra’s wishes.
Part 1, Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Part 1 largely focuses on establishing the setting and characters of the story. Jean Louise is portrayed as an opinionated—even a contrary—modern woman with sensibilities more in line with the culture of New York than with that of Maycomb, Alabama. Despite intense pressure from her aunt, Jean Louise has a considerable will. This is particularly clear in her recollection of her concise explanation of why she would not be a “good daughter” and move in with her father after her brother’s death. She was able to assess the situation and conclude that, while it would improve her reputation in Maycomb, it would decrease not only her satisfaction with her life, but also that of her father, whom the move would ostensibly be to help. Jean Louise demonstrates a similar stance, favoring her own wishes over pandering to the town, through her sartorial choices. While her aunt bemoans her chosen clothing, Jean Louise explains that the townspeople would find a way to criticize any choice she made, so she might as well suit herself. Her contrarian tendencies are also visible in her relationship with Hank. When he asks her to marry him, she says no emphatically. However, when Aunt Alexandra warns her away from the marriage, she holds her beau tight and considers how “close” she is to marrying him.
In addition to establishing Jean Louise’s self-assured, borderline petulant character, these inter-character skirmishes lay the groundwork for the theme of conflict in terms of sociopolitical views. Jean Louise and Aunt Alexandra are presented as foils of one another socially. Aunt Alexandra represents the past: traditionalism, restrictive gender roles, and favoring appearances over substance. Jean Louise is cast as the opposite: a modern woman with modern sensibilities who favors substance over style. This contrast foreshadows the conflict between Maycomb, a town stuck in the past, and desegregation, the plan to move things into the modern era.
Jean Louise’s relationship to her father is portrayed as extremely vital to her character, even though he appears comparatively little in this section. Jean Louise’s thoughts are often centered on him—his wellness or lack thereof, his living situation, his relationship with his protégé. Jean Louise also considers herself an expert on his personality and opinion, expressing certainty regarding what he would say and how he would feel in response to various situations and proposals. Her certainty sets the stage for the major conflict to come when she discovers that her confidence in her understanding of her father’s beliefs is unfounded in at least one critical area.
Jean Louise also considers marriage to the boyfriend she has for two weeks out of the year: her father’s protégé, Hank. Hank is besotted with her despite her flaws and displays patient indulgence when it comes to her reluctance if not reticence to marry. Despite being a key element in the story, Hank also appears little in Part 1. His background, positive and negative, is established by the other characters, and aside from a few sentences about his relationship with Jean Louise, he has little to say.
The narration style is notably inconsistent. At times, it seems to be in third-person omniscient, but at other points, it seems to be in first or second person. In many of these narrative slips, Jean Louise is the narrator, making the narration unreliable.
