Go Set A Watchman

Identity is a key theme shown in both the struggles of the American South and in the main character’s own development. Uncle Jack explains that while the Civil War was ostensibly about slavery, it was actually fought by thousands of individuals who feared that their way of life was at risk of being destroyed. Since this way of life was inherently tied to their own senses of identity, fighting in the war was their desperate attempt to preserve these identities. In the present, Maycomb’s citizens’ council is fighting the same doomed fight, trying to keep the African American population under its thumb in order to validate and preserve its members’ own self-worth; if they are not better than African Americans by virtue of their race, then they no longer have any superiority at all. Their sense of identity is connected to this superiority, so any perceived attack on the superiority is perceived as an attack on identity.

Jean Louise’s own struggle parallels the South’s situation. She is desperately trying to hold on to her own worldview and perception of her loved ones because these views are also reflections of herself; she is forced to consider what it says about her that she idolized and learned her moral values from a racist. When she encounters proof that her father’s moral views do not match her own, the revelation triggers an identity crisis because she has adopted what she believed to be his views as her own. Now that his actual views fail to live up to her judgment, she must consider whether to change her mind and agree with him or develop her own sense of identity apart from her father’s. When she realizes that she cannot accept what she now knows to be his moral values as her own, she becomes her own person with her own identity.

While identity and disillusionment are the primary themes, racism is the catalyst that forces Jean Louise to become aware of them. The white South has been experiencing social and political change at a rate with which it is not comfortable. After slavery was outlawed and the South lost the Civil War, the Reconstruction period left Southerners feeling disenfranchised. As the Supreme Court orders desegregation in schools, they are further discomfited by the idea that their way of life is coming to an end. This threat causes them to try to hold on to their culture by oppressing the Black population, leading to racist propaganda, hate crimes, and the creation of hate groups. The increased racial tension provides an excuse for racist individuals to spout their ideology in public unabashedly.

This issue is used as the backdrop for the novel’s plot, but key social aspects of this tense period of history are touched upon. For example, a crucial part of Jean Louise’s crisis is challenging her own preconceptions of what a racist says and does. In her mind, racists are all the same and all behave the same way—they speak condescendingly to and about people of color, they use racial slurs, and they incite lynchings. Since she has intrinsically connected disrespectful and violent behavior with racism, she is unable to see the racism in her polite and nonviolent father. When she sees him quietly condoning the blatant hate speech at the citizens’ council, she reaches the horrifying realization that racism is often silent and invisible if one is not looking for it. Jean Louise believes that Atticus’s milder version of racism is not more acceptable simply because it is not actively violent. She is forced to abandon her binary view of racism and come to terms with a more realistic gradient scale. This change in viewpoint is almost as difficult for her to accept as the fact that her father is racist at all.

Atticus’s racism is portrayed in mostly subtle ways. While Jean Louise was able to misinterpret his beliefs on equality and justice due to his previous defense of a young African American man, his motives were more legalistic and pragmatic than idealistic. Similarly, she is horrified to learn that he is willing to take on another Black man’s case for the sole purpose of preventing NAACP involvement—something that is not in the best interest of the client. When he is confronted about his complicity in the hate-mongering of the citizens’ council, he insists that it is their “only defense” against the NAACP, civil rights advancements, and the consequent loss of the Southern way of life. Atticus goes on to explain that he believes the African American population to be at a childlike stage of development and that, eventually, they might have learned to adapt fully to white ways.

This point of view is in accordance with the concept of the white man’s burden, the idea that people of color are inherently inferior to whites and whites therefore have a moral obligation to provide oversight. In addition to his infantilization of an entire race, Atticus also demonstrates exceptionalism—a rationalization technique in which any evidence that runs counter to a prejudicial belief or expectation is treated as an exception rather than the norm. This approach allows a prejudiced person to rationalize maintaining their biased beliefs, especially when contradicted by personal experience or anecdotal evidence. Specifically, this is evident when Atticus calmly informs Jean Louise that she should not consider the South’s attempts to regain control over its African American population as related in any way to the Black woman who raised her. He insists that participation in the citizens’ council, opposition to desegregation, and the like have “nothing to do with our Calpurnia and what she’s meant to us, how faithful she’s been to us—“ (248). In reality, the fact that he has spent decades relying on a Black woman to keep his house and raise his children should have provided anecdotal evidence of the potential for capability, intelligence, and patience that members of her race possess. Instead, he views Calpurnia as entirely unrelated to the issue of civil rights. With such a point of view, Jean Louise is able to understand Calpurnia’s refusal to treat the Finches like family as she once did.