“Now think about this,” he tells his daughter. We encounter Atticus’ even-handedness: his insistence on “always to put himself in his client’s shoes.” In “Go Set a Watchman,” however, this is not a marker of his moral dependability, but rather of his moral corruption.Ĭorruption? Yes - for this is not the Atticus of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In “Go Set a Watchman,” he has turned a treacherous corner, aligning with the citizen’s council and the Ku Klux Klan.

We learn, in a passage virtually identical to one in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” of the town’s origin as county seat, after a tavern keeper named Sinkfield “made the surveyors drunk one evening, induced them to bring forward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there, and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements.” Lee introduces us to Maycomb, its history and inconsistencies, as if we have never been here before.

That’s just one of many points of divergence or overlap between the novels, which are related in a complicated way.Īccording to numerous accounts, “Go Set a Watchman” is the earliest version of the manuscript that became “To Kill a Mockingbird,” acquired by Lippincott in 1957 and subjected, under the guidance of editor Tay Hohoff, to what Smithsonian Magazine once called “a title-on-down revision.” What does this mean for us as readers? That we can’t help but engage with “Go Set a Watchman” through a filter of comparison.

Harper lee second book