Harper Lee, award winning author of the celebrated To Kill a Mockingbird¸ released her sequel, Go Set a Watchman, on July 14^th, 2015. I marked my calendar and rushed to the book store to pick up a hard copy, because an electronic copy would simply not suffice. Having high expectations due to the brilliance of her previous novel, I was slightly disappointed after finishing the sequel.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee developed a deep personality for all of her characters, especially in the characters of Scout and Atticus. While I liked the new portrayal of Scout as an empowered, independent woman in Go Set a Watchman, I was particularly upset with the personality change of Atticus. Most people referred to Atticus as a man of integrity and good morals after reading To Kill a Mockingbird, but that idea is distorted with the counter-ego of Atticus in the second novel.

If you have ever read Lee’s first novel, you would know what Atticus goes against the norms of the 1930 society by defending a black man against a white woman in a legal trial, making him a friendly, approachable, and respectable man in today’s society, being as he knows that the man is wrongly accused. I personally developed a connection and liking of Atticus based on this action, so the change in my view of him was quickly altered and diminished throughout the pages of Go Set a Watchman. The second novel is centered more around Scout, who was once just a young girl who admired her father for his goodness and intelligence, but has begun to see how corrupt and half-hearted he has become since she has left Maycomb County and started her career elsewhere. Atticus, in the sequel, is discovered to be a racist, which is completely against everything he stands for in the first novel. He also pressures his daughter about not having a steady man and potential husband in her life, which is different from the man in the first novel who is always protecting Scout, and educating her to become a woman who could advocate for herself. While this is completely shocking and in a way enraging to me, it turns out to benefit Scout in the end, forcing her to be morally strong, and develop a foundation for herself as a now completely independent woman in a society that does not condone it.

Definitely full of emotions, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman is a thought-provoking book worth reading!