Plot Overview

About the Author

A sequel to the previous novel of To Kill a

Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman fast
forwards and presents the audience with Jean
Louises, formerly known as Scout, new life
and her hometown of Maycomb. Jean Louise
travels back to Maycomb on a train from
New York, where she currently resides in, to
visit her seventy year old father Atticus
Finch who now is accompanied in his house
by his sister Alexandra. She also has a
boyfriend back in her old town of Maycomb
named Henry Clinton. As Jean Louise and
Henry visit the Finchs landing, she soon
discovers that the estate of her former
grandmother has been sold to a local hunting
club by her family. Jean Louise notices that
the world she grew up in is changing and no
one had bothered to inform her of it. What
upsets her even more is that her world was
never what she thought it was. While inside
Atticus office, Jean Louise comes across a
racist pamphlet written by her own father.
Aside from that she overhears her Aunt
defending racist beliefs, and witnesses her
boyfriend and father at a Maycomb Citizens
Council meeting, basically a racist council.
Through the story Jean Louise can not shake
the fact that her own father believes such
ways, but comes to terms that every person
has their own beliefs and creates mistakes.

Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama

on April 28, 1926. Lee is the youngest of four
children of Frances Cunningham and Amasa
Coleman Lee. Descendent of the Southern Civil War
general, Robert E. Lee. Father was known to have
practiced as a lawyer in Monroeville and have
served as a senator. From the years of 1945 to 1949,
she studied law at the University of Alabama, and
also was an exchange student at Oxford University
for a year. She pursued her literary career six months
before finishing her studies and went to New York to
do so. During the 1950s, Lee worked as an Airline
reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and British
Overseas Airways. Also, in 1959 Lee traveled to
Holcomb, Kansas with Truman Capote for Capotes
nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. Lees first novel
was To Kill a Mockingbird.

Character Analysis

Themes

Novel Notes
Go Set a
Watchman
Harper Lee
Rachel Pao
May 19, 2016

Historical Context

Essential Quotes

Go Set a Watchman is actually the first draft

of the novel, published in 1957, whereas To
Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960.
Lees editor thought the novel to be not fully
finished and was just a series of anecdotes.
These two novels differ very much from one
another such as characterization and plot
points; intentions of Lee.

I just dont like my world disturbed

without some warning(Lee 25).

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean

one, have something in common, they both
begin where reason ends (249).

Motifs and Symbols

Jean Louise Novels protagonist, a twenty-year old

woman who is an intelligent and stubborn
from Maycomb, Alabama. Growing up she
went by the nickname Scout. Growing up,
she then attended a womens college and is
trying to be an artist in New York. She grew
up idolizing her father and bases her
conscience around the morals her taught her
and her brother, Jem.
Atticus FinchSingle father of two kids, Jean Louise and
Jem, he lives in small town known to be a
respected lawyer and member of the state
legislature. He raised and taught his kids to
be independant, well-read, empathetic, and
with strong morals. Aside from defending a
black man in court, Atticus opposes
integration, especially one enforced by the
federal govt. He is also a member of the
Maycomb Citizens Council, known to be a
racist council.
Henry ClintonJean Louises boyfriend and also known to
be her oldest friend. He moved in next to the
Finches while Jean Louise was growing up.
Hank has worked for everything hes got
since he has been born poor and had been
single handedly raised by a single mother.
He becomes Atticus apprentice and also
becomes a member of Maycomb Citizens
Council.

RacismThis focuses around Atticus due to the fact that in

the novel it is discovered that he is racist. Atticus
had been the one to teach Jean Louise of human
dignity, but now that she is grown up she is still
color blind in the way Atticus raised her.

Ice Cream ShopThe house Jean Louise grew up in was torn down
and replaced by an ice cream shop. The ice cream
shop representing disillusionment that Jean Louise
experiences when she comes home, her world is
changing around her and she no longer fits in.

DisillusionmentIn the first novel of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean

Louise grew up idolizing her father and was very
dependent on. However, in the sequel novel of Go
Set a Watchman her idolization is broken apart
when she returns home to her father and finds out
he is to be a staunch segregationist.

WatchmanA persons conscience is known to be a watchman.

Uncle Jack later mentions in the novel to Jean
Louise to allow her to comprehend that every man
is part of a community and that every man's own
Watchman is its conscience.

PrinciplesGrowing up, Jean Louise was instilled with strong

principles by Atticus, in which he falls short of. Jean
Louise is put in a conflicting position in which she
has to reconcile her own conscience with her love
for her family and friends.

Color BlindnessJean Louise discovers that all her life shes been
born with a visual defect that has gone unnoticed by
the closest people to her and herself, and that is
she was born color blind. This not only talks about
her impaired visualness, but also towards the color
blindness regarding race, as if she lives in a racial
harmony.