(Spoiler Alert: Contains plot spoilers from Go, Set a Watchman)
No one likes growing up. I think if growing up has taught me one thing, it’s that. Growing up isn’t about the height increasing (especially if you’re vertically challenged, like me), it’s not about increasing waistlines or having sex, though I suppose such things count. I think it’s really a little bit about shattered illusions and learning that life isn’t perfect.
And if there’s one book that can do that to you, it’s Go, Set a Watchman.
I’ve read numerous reviews recently about how the book just isn’t Mockingbird; that death is preferable to reading about a racist Atticus Finch; that it’s impossible to quite recover from the death of Jem. And I don’t really agree. There’s this part in the book when Uncle Jack tells Scout that it was important for her to see the other side of Atticus otherwise she’d never see him as human and always as God. I think the same held for me.
For me, Atticus was the ideal man. Mockingbird is what reminded me of being 16 and studying Elective English; Scout and Jem had my perfect childhood-they reminded me a little bit of my brother and I. And if I could, I’d always hold on to the belief that Atticus was perfect-that fairness, justice and integrity were all that he embodied. In my head, Jem would be alive and perfect and protective and stubborn and Scout would end up married to Dill. As it turned out, none of that happened.
And I think that’s Ok. I think it’s OK, and important, for me to realize that perfection doesn’t really exist. Like Scout, it hurt me too, when I heard Atticus say things that he did in the book but I suppose I needed to stop being a child someday. Would it be different if Watchman had released before Mockingbird, like it was meant to? Yes. Because as a book, Watchman is not as powerful as Mockingbird-I don’t know whether it’s just the perspective of an adult narrator, or the lack of the trial scene here but I don’t think Atticus, Jem and Scout would have meant so much to me without Mockingbird. And therefore, I don’t think Watchman would have made so much of an impact without it.
So yes, in spite of everything, I’m glad I read Watchman. And I still think that my life and my childhood would have been incomplete without Mockingbird. And in my heart, Jem will always be alive. But that’s the thing about good literature. It makes and breaks worlds for you. And in spite of all the heartbreak, and the fact that he did turn out to be a mere mortal, I’m so glad I met Atticus Finch and his children.
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