Atticus Finch Is Racist In Mockingbird Sequel
It’s not what liberals want to hear: that Atticus Finch, the liberal hero played by Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird becomes a virulent racist in the Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman.
Lee’s much-anticipated new book, Go Set a Watchman, was actually written before the publication of her masterpiece in 1960. The manuscript contained a series of flashbacks to the early life of its heroine, Scout Finch, and her publisher, who was intrigued by the vivid picture they painted, suggested the author should go away and write another novel based on those passages.
Lee’s rewrite, Mockingbird, went on to win the Pulitzer prize. In 1962 it was turned into a well-loved film starring Gregory Peck and Mary Badham and it was recently described by Oprah Winfrey as “our national book”. It tells the story of Scout and her brother, Jem, and the life they shared 20 years earlier in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, with their widower father, Atticus. A lawyer, their father has to defend a black man, Tom Robinson, from a rape charge and his fair-minded, humanitarian attitudes, as represented to the reader through the eyes of his loving, young daughter, have since spawned a million legal careers.
Breaking an international embargo, The New York Times ran a review on Friday revealing the contents of Watchman and the news that Atticus Finch, a hero of American liberal values, had been conceived as a flawed racist, has upset many fans of Lee’s original book.
Copyright 2015 Liberaland
5 responses to Atticus Finch Is Racist In Mockingbird Sequel
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Hirightnow July 11th, 2015 at 18:44
See Ted Cruz? THIS is how you use RWers to get on the Best Seller list…
Terry "Death to Equality" Xu July 11th, 2015 at 19:27
shrug – both the author and her backers are money grubbing
racism is irrelevant in 2015 and they need to get with the times
Mike July 11th, 2015 at 20:53
“…It’s not what liberals want to hear: …”
LMAO…Speak for yourself.
Sorry Alan, true liberals like myself could care less what fictional characters do or don’t do. What’s next a debate about who would win a fight between Rocky and Rambo…Superman v Batman…God v Baal…????
Annie July 11th, 2015 at 21:41
Because I’m a literature nerd, I am excited at the idea of Atticus being a racist. To think his character is even more complex and multi-dimensional than we are shown in Mockingbird is pretty fascinating to me. Harper Lee has given us a reason to think about how we perceive others based merely upon their behaviors. That he kept his racist beliefs from his children, and from his client and the court, to defend both the accused and the rule of law, in his role as attorney, makes him a man both principled and vile. His job was to see to it that justice was properly served, and he did just that, perhaps in spite of his racist tendencies. I’m already exploring whether he knew his beliefs were wrong, and so made sure he didn’t pass them along to his children, because it was the right thing to do. The battle between ideology and reality, etc… I have goosebumps just thinking about it!!
robert July 12th, 2015 at 00:28
This is nothing new to fictional characters in books and movies. Ebenezer scrooge ( a xmas carol ) first convinced its readers / audience that he cared for nothing but his own wealth only to reveal in the end it wasn’t his true belief.
some writers reveal their characters early some don’t