Book offers fuller portrait of Atticus Finch - Philly.com
If there is anything about Go Set a Watchman that makes it superior to Harper Lee's much acclaimed first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, it's that she paints a more complete picture of the heroic Atticus Finch, a picture that any black person like... After all, Abraham "The Great Emancipator" Lincoln was a racist too. Don't believe it. Consider these statements by Lincoln: "There must be the position of superior and inferior and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race," and "As long as blacks continue... Does the fact that Lincoln was a man of his times diminish my respect for him as perhaps this nation's greatest president, a man who is owed every measure of gratitude that most African Americans reserve for him. Lee tried to make Atticus more human in Go Set a Watchman. It is about 20 years later in Go Set a Watchman, which wasn't published until earlier this year. His grown-up daughter, Jean Louise, "Scout," is back home in Alabama for a visit from New York when she discovers that her beloved daddy, the man who years earlier bravely defended a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman, is. Source: www.philly.com
