Go find a guard

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Go, set a watchman (in the original Go Set a Watchman ) is a novel by Harper Lee . It is the first draft of their world bestseller Who disturbs the nightingale (1960) and was supposedly written in 1957. After the manuscript was found in Lee's safe deposit box, HarperCollins- Verlag published it for the first time in 2015.

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Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, now 26 years old and a law student, is visiting her fictional hometown of Maycomb in Alabama from New York City . Her older brother Jeremy "Jem" Finch died a few years ago of a genetic heart disease, which was also caused by the early death of their mother. The long-time black housekeeper Calpurnia, a kind of mother figure for Jean Louise, has now retired. Since then, her aunt Alexandra, with whom Jean Louise has a distant relationship, has been running the household. On the other hand, she gets along very well with her uncle Jack, a retired doctor.

In Maycomb she first meets her childhood sweetheart, attorney Henry "Hank" Clinton, who works for her father, Atticus. Henry suggests that she move back to Maycomb and marry him. She imagines life as Hank's wife several times and also recalls her childhood days with her brother and their two childhood friends "Dill" Harris and Hank.

But Jean Louise quickly notices that some things have fundamentally changed in her hometown: the end of racial segregation through the Brown v. Board of Education and the advancement of the black population, especially through the civil rights organization National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is viewed very critically by the white residents of Maycomb, mostly descendants of former slave owners. Because Jean Louise grew up with a black woman (Calpurnia) and her father Atticus often represented innocent black people in racist criminal trials, she does not share racist ideas and has no understanding of them.

But shortly afterwards she finds a racist magazine entitled "The Black Plague" in her father's files and secretly observes him and Henry at a meeting of a White Citizens Council , where Atticus receives a racist speaker. She is completely horrified to discover that her two closest confidants also share the racist sentiments that are prevalent in the southern states. She storms out and collapses.

The next morning, Jean Louise learns that Calpurnia's grandson hit a white pedestrian and was fatally injured. She visits Calpurnia, but is treated coldly, which further hurts her. Atticus is handling criminal defense to prevent the NAACP from interfering in the case.

Jean Louise then meets Henry. In a loud argument on the street, she accuses him of participating in the White Citizens Council. Henry explains that he is a member of the council mainly for opportunistic reasons: to influence politics in Maycomb and to make money for a family. He believes people sometimes have to do things they don't want to do in order to achieve a goal. Thereupon Jean Louise describes him as a hypocrite and tells him that she will never marry him.

Suddenly Atticus appears and asks Jean Louise into her office. He explains to her that he is a member of the White Citizens Council because he believes that blacks in the southern states should not yet be fully equal because they would not be able to take on the responsibility it requires. He also sees it as a legal scandal that the Supreme Court, as a federal court, interferes in racial segregation, as the latter would be a matter for the states. Jean Louise agrees with Atticus regarding the federal court, but replies that after years of discrimination, she considers the black population to be relatively responsible and is disgusted by her father's positions because she actually knows her father as a very tolerant and fair person.

Just as she is angry about to leave by car, she knocks her uncle Jack down to get her attention. He explains to her that she is now an adult because she has finally separated from her father and no longer sees him as an infallible "God", but as a fallible human being. After a moment she agrees with Uncle Jack's line of thought. She agrees to meet Henry for dinner, but believes that she can never marry him because Henry learned a lifestyle in Maycomb that is alien to her. When she meets Atticus, he is very proud of her because she has remained true to her own values ​​and defended them even against him. Jean Louise tells Atticus that she loves him very much and for the first time sees her father no longer as her idol, but as a human being.

Work history

Harper Lee had sold the manuscript to the publishing house JB Lippincott & Co. in October 1957. The editor there, Tay Hohoff , considered it "more of a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel" and not ready for publication. Impressed by Lee's literary talent, she found that the strongest aspect of the novel was the flashback sequences in Scout's childhood. Accordingly, Hohoff asked the writer to use these flashbacks as the basis for a new novel. Lee agreed, and "over the next few years, Hohoff took Lee from one draft to the next, until the book finally reached its final form and was renamed To Kill a Mockingbird ." This chronology is also confirmed by the records of Lee's literary agents.

Although the general plot of Go To Kill a Mockingbird was completely deleted in later versions, some central plot points of To Kill a Mockingbird can be seen in the manuscript. The literary critic Michiko Kakutani states: "The trial of a black man who is accused of raping a young white woman is only a subplot in Watchman. (The trial leads to a guilty verdict for the accused, Tom Robinson, in Mockingbird , but leads to an acquittal in Watchman ). " In her opinion, the manuscript is fascinating primarily because of the question of how a tale about a young woman's grief over the discovery of her father's bigoted views could become a classic coming-of-age story about two children and their devoted single father . Kakutani describes Go, a Guardian as "a desperate tale full of characters holding hate speech", while Who disturbs the nightingale is a "redemption novel" that conveys "a feeling of emerging humanism and decency". The New York Times author Jonathan Mahler suspects that the figure of Atticus Finch in the final version of Dr. John Lovejoy Elliott, whose biography Tay Hohoff wrote parallel to his work on Who disturbs the nightingale . Therefore, Atticus' characterization as a segregationist was omitted.

Publication and reception

In 2011, Sotheby’s carried out an appraisal of Lee's fortune , and in the course of this, the typewritten manuscript, believed to be lost, was found in a safe deposit box in Lee's hometown of Monroeville. Lee's attorney Tanja Carter passed it on to the author and her agent at the time.

In February 2015 the publisher HarperCollins announced that it would publish a "newly discovered sequel to Who disturbs the nightingale ". Critical voices questioned whether Lee had given her conscious consent to the publication, as she had always emphasized for decades that she would never want to write a book again. Harper Lee's sister, who had advised and looked after her, had also died a few months before the announcement. Author Marja Mills described Harper Lee as "in a wheelchair in an assisted living center, almost deaf and blind" and her visitors "restricted to those on an approved list." The State of Alabama investigated the suspicion of elder abuse related to the publication of the book, but concluded that the allegations were unfounded.

New York Times columnist Joe Necara criticized the publisher and lawyer for promoting the book as a stand-alone novel and "newly discovered sequel," even though they knew full well that it was the original manuscript, written in 1957. He accused Tanja Carter of waiting for the moment when she and not [Harper's sister] Alice would be in charge of Harper Lee's affairs.

A bookstore in Michigan offered full refunds to all customers who were misled by the book's marketing after it was published. In a statement she described the marketing as "exploitative", condemned the publication of the manuscript, and compared it to James Joyce's Stephen Hero .

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter Grünzweig: Go there, provide a watchman : Dead Souls , derstandard.at , August 2, 2015
  2. ↑ a b Jonathan Mahler: The Invisible Hand Behind Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' . In: The New York Times . July 12, 2015, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  3. ↑ Go Set a Watchman in the papers of Harper Lee's literary agents - News from Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Retrieved July 11, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Michiko Kakutani: Review: Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' Gives Atticus Finch a Dark Side . In: The New York Times . July 10, 2015, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  5. ↑ Ed Pilkington: Go Set a Watchman: mystery of Harper Lee manuscript discovery deepens . In: The Guardian . July 2, 2015, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Questions I Have About The Harper Lee Editor Interview. February 5, 2015, accessed July 11, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Marja Mills: The Harper Lee I Knew. Retrieved July 11, 2020 .
  8. ^ Serge F. Kovaleski: Alabama Officials Find Harper Lee in Control of Decision to Publish Second Novel. In: ArtsBeat. April 3, 2015, Retrieved July 11, 2020 (American English).
  9. ^ Joe Nocera: Opinion | The Harper Lee 'Go Set a Watchman' Fraud . In: The New York Times . July 24, 2015, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 11, 2020]).
  10. ↑ Alex Shephard: Why Brilliant Books is offering refunds to customers who purchased Go Set A Watchman. Retrieved July 11, 2020 (American English).

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