Transformation over Time
At times, people are much more layered, inscrutable, enigmatic than they usually appear, or how they project themselves. And their motivations for an act – from the most noble, altruistic, good Samaritan ones to the petty, ignoble, sordid and dreadful ones – are difficult to pin on a single reason and too simplistic to characterize in Manichean binaries.
After reading both 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Go Set a Watchman' – the sequel to the Pulitzer Prize winning novel written more than 50 years after it – the difference in the thought process, ideological orientation and world outlook of Atticus Finch in both the novels almost makes it appear as if they are two different people with little commonality.
Atticus Finch of Mockingbird is a conscientious and a forthright middle-aged lawyer who believes in justice above everything else. He isn’t afraid of being a dissenter and standing up to the call of his conscience.
He teaches his children:
‘The only thing in this world that doesn’t abide by the majority of one is a person’s conscience’.
He is an epitome of rectitude and incremental change that one man with a sense of moral and ethical probity can hope to bring by not succumbing to hysteria and following the inner voice of his conscience.
'To Kill a Mockingbird' establishes Atticus as a conscience-keeper and a normal man honestly and solemnly carrying on with his sense of duty without being affected by sniggering, derision and brickbats.
While, 'Go Set a Watchman' – whose fictional backdrop is set 20 years after the first novel when civil rights movements and protests for racial equality were gaining momentum in the southern states – shows the ailing and ageing Atticus Finch in provincial Alabama.
Atticus has now taken a young lawyer under his wings and is associated with community causes. The principled and morally upright Atticus has morphed into a hidebound conservative. He has turned into a reactionary and calculative pragmatic man who is afraid of disapprobation from his community and doing anything that might endanger their interests.
This completes the dramatic transformation of a man from a beacon of justice and honesty to one wedded to social conformism and status quo. The same man, who earlier took, pro bono, the case of a hapless Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman, despite fierce opposition and flak from his town, now favors racial segregation and is wary of ‘them’ entering ‘our’ schools, colleges, and neighborhoods.
Not only is the sense of propriety in him vanished, but it is replaced by distrust, prejudice and cynicism.
For those who grew up reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and looking up to Atticus, the main protagonist, as a hero figure, its sequel by Harper Lee must have been nothing less than a rude awakening and a terrible jolt.
But more than anything else, it tells us about human frailties, vulnerabilities, pernicious impact of group think and how the 'collective' impacts the mindset of individuals.
As Mark Twain and Hannah Arendt would have said that in the spring of life a lot of people are progressive, radical, flag bearers of justice, egalitarianism, ethics, but in ripe old age they metamorphose into conservatives, perhaps out of a sense of security, belonging, or not seeing themselves as atomistic individuals but giving primacy to their community or village.
Another noteworthy lesson from both these novels is that a lot of our heroes will invariably have feet of clay because at the end of the day they are just that – humans with all their biases, conditioning and eccentricities.