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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert
What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert
President's Research and Writings
Last fall, shortly after it was published, I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, and this summer I reread her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy around Watchman intrigued me. I saw the differences in the books mainly as the change between the perspectives of the young Scout and the adult Scout (aka Jean Louise). Unlike some, I saw the Watchman as an honest book reflecting the complicated reality of white America in the Jim Crow era.
From Scout To Jean Louise, John Sivils
From Scout To Jean Louise, John Sivils
English Class Publications
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and its controversial sequel Go Set a Watchman, seem to revolve around similar events in the lives of the Finch family and the community of Maycomb. However, despite both being set in the same town and both being narrated by Jean Louise Finch, Lee uses different structures for the novels to serve different literary goals. Through Mockingbird, Lee uses Jem’s coming of age to criticize the social and political climate of the 1950s, though she does so through the ostensible 1930s setting of the novel. Through Watchman, Lee uses Scout’s …
The Times Are-A-Changin': Portrayal Of Atticus Finch Across Harper Lee's Novels, Kacy Alaina Earnest
The Times Are-A-Changin': Portrayal Of Atticus Finch Across Harper Lee's Novels, Kacy Alaina Earnest
English Class Publications
In Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is the most successful lawyer in Maycomb, AL during the 1930s. When he takes a rape case defending an African American man against a white woman, the town doubts his sanity. The townspeople speculate that Atticus has taken the case for the sake of justice, possibly even racial equality. He goes against the town’s unspoken racial stigma to defend Tom Robinson. However, Atticus’ views on race relations seem to have flipped one-hundred-eighty degrees in Lee’s 2015 novel Go Set a Watchman. Readers see a dark side of …