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American Studies

2016

Series

Go Set a Watchman

English Class Publications

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

From Scout To Jean Louise, John Sivils Apr 2016

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 Apr 2016

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 …