{"id":25168,"date":"2015-11-13T14:42:13","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T19:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=25168"},"modified":"2015-11-13T14:42:13","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T19:42:13","slug":"atticus-finch-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2015\/11\/atticus-finch-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"Atticus Finch Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Atticus_and_Tom_Robinson_in_court\"<\/a>Harper Lee\u2019s Go Set a Watchman<\/em> has an undeniably odd publication history. Ms. Lee wrote the novel in the 1950s, well before she wrote and published her beloved To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>. When she finally agreed to publish Go Set a Watchman<\/em> in 2015, it registered on critics and readers as a sequel of sorts for To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Go Set a Watchman<\/em> involves the moving rebuilding of a parent-child relationship after the child has lost respect for the parent, and this account deserves contemplation and reflection. However, the novel as a whole is only mediocre. Furthermore, many readers will be shocked and disappointed by the novel\u2019s suggestion that Atticus Finch is not the heroic man they thought he was.<\/p>\n

In particular, Finch is hardly a staunch defender of civil rights for the people he calls \u201cNegroes.\u201d He tells his daughter Jean Louise, who was known as Scout as a young girl, \u201cNegroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.\u201d He also reveals he is taking the case of an African American defendant so that the case does not fall into the hands of NAACP lawyers. In Finch\u2019s opinion, the latter are too eagerly seeking cases they can rush into the federal courts.<\/p>\n

If Finch is not the champion of civil rights people took him to be in To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, his attitude about the law has supposedly remained consistent. Uncle Jack Finch tells Jean Louise: \u201cThe law is what Atticus lives by. He\u2019ll do his best to prevent somebody beating up somebody else, and then he\u2019ll turn around and try to stop the Federal Government if it is breaking the law . . . . [B]ut remember this, he\u2019ll always do it by the letter of the law. That\u2019s the way he lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

But alas, even Finch\u2019s belief in the law has a hollowness to it. In Uncle Jack\u2019s opinion, Atticus Finch\u2019s law is only a \u201ctin god.\u201d For Atticus Finch, law and the abstract justice it might yield were part of a cultivated false consciousness. It enabled him to carry on despite the confusion and the contradictions that had begun to bedevil the American South of the mid-twentieth century.<\/p>\n

Harper Lee\u2019s reflections on Atticus Finch and the law are neither secondary nor inconsequential. She herself was the daughter of a lawyer\/ judge and came within one semester of graduating from law school. In her earnest account of Atticus Finch, Lee warns against having a rigid and superficial belief in law as a guide in life. It is not enough, Lee seems to be telling us, to simply live by the letter of the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harper Lee\u2019s Go Set a Watchman has an undeniably odd publication history. Ms. Lee wrote the novel in the 1950s, well before she wrote and published her beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. When she finally agreed to publish Go Set a Watchman in 2015, it registered on critics and readers as a sequel of sorts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[98,37,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-popular-culture-and-law","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}