Abstract
The 2015 release of Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman led to a frenzied reaction from admirers of To Kill a Mockingbird. This rush to decipher Atticus’s racial attitudes overshadowed Lee’s full unveiling of important new dimensions in the Finch family tale. First and foremost, the heart of both novels is the moral and political development of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. Scout’s complicated education in civic, moral, and legal virtue requires readers to make sense of Atticus as a teacher. His lessons on justice and his political actions in Watchman illuminate his jurisprudence in Mockingbird as within the rule of law and civil rights traditions of a jurist such as Hugo Black. Finally, Watchman completes the arc of Jean Louise’s education by illustrating the dangerous consequences of political life without friendship. Read together, the novels offer a coherent and extraordinary commentary on American political life and thought.
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