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allegedly possessing theattitude of a “racist”are imposing their 2015racial sensibility into amid-1950s mindset andmoral compass. A soci-ety’s going through anysignificant transforma-tion is a historical pro-cess that takes someperiod of time to effectand involves communi-cating a morass of infor-mation that takes someperiod of time for hu-man beings to digest.

To understand theevolving story and char-acters, some backgroundis in order. During thefour years Harper Leespoke to the media af-ter To Kill a Mocking-bird’s release, before sheslammed the door onpublic life, the author(then in her mid-30s) acknowledgedthat the inspiration for Atticus Finchhad come from her humble, dignified,high-integrity attorney-father, AmasaLee, who practiced law in the smalltown where she grew up—Mon-roeville, Alabama.

Knowing the author’s background,hometown, and relationship with theman on whom Atticus is based madeit an easy task to connect the dots onwhat had led Lee to write her PulitzerPrize-winning book. Fictional May-comb, Alabama, in the 1930s was asetting identical to Monroeville inthe 1930s. The age and tomboy per-sonality of the protagonist JeanLouise “Scout” Finch matched theauthor’s during that decade. Atticus’smarital status was different than

Amasa’s (since Atticus was a widowerand Amasa was married to Lee’smother, whose maiden name wasFinch); but because Lee’s mother hadmental illness, Amasa, like Atticus,had full responsibility for his children’supbringing.

Parallels between Mockingbird’scharacters and the people of Lee’schildhood continue beyond her andher father. Like Scout, Lee had anolder brother, Edwin, a buddinghometown football star, whom sheadored throughout her childhood,and who surely inspired the book’scharacter Jem. She also had aneccentric running buddy during heryouth named Truman Capote, whoshe acknowledged in interviews hadinspired the character Dill.

he barrage of early commentaryfollowing the much-hyped releaseof Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watch-man (HarperCollins, 2015) reeked

of disillusionment. In the new book,Lee presents Atticus Finch—a char-acter based on the author’s father—not as an embodiment of humanperfection worthy of worship, as hewas seen in To Kill a Mockingbird, butas a hypocrite whose late-in-life “black-is-black-and-white-is-white” talk andwalk appear to be in total conflictwith his words and deeds from 20years earlier. It seemed that the world’smost revered attorney was suddenlynot so righteous.

The public has been reading andreflecting, drawing its own opinionsabout the author and her characters.Some disgruntled Atticus fans voicedoutrage on Twitter; others turned to theblogosphere or the watercooler for dis-cussion. Here are my own conclusions.

Both books are more memoir thanfiction, based on our knowledge ofevents in Lee’s life. Mockingbird is thestory of her “coming of age” as achild, while Watchman is the story ofher “coming of age” as a youngwoman. Throughout the two-decadepersonal history timeline, Jean LouiseFinch managed to never backslide asher color-blind eyes kept openingwider to the ugly truth of race rela-tions in Alabama during the 1930sand 1950s and the realities of African-Americans’ struggle for civil rights inthe Deep South.

Jean Louise’s father, on the otherhand, is a different story, as we learnin Watchman that an older Atticusbecomes a member of the local anti-integration “Citizens’ Council.” Butthe critics of Watchman who havedemonized this version of Atticus for

BY TALMAGE BOSTON

Cracking the Code on Harper Lee Atticus through Watchman and Mockingbird.

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about Mockingbird were firmly estab-lished in the public consciousness untilthe release of Lee’s “new” “novel,”Go Set a Watchman, on July 14, 2015.In the avalanche of news stories thathave overwhelmed readers during themonths leading up to its publication,we learned that Watchman had beendelivered not at the initiative of the89-year-old author, now residing in anassisted living center in Monroevillewhere a security guard allegedly standsby her door. Rather, it has beenbrought forth at the behest of theauthor’s lawyer, Tonja Carter, whoreportedly found the manuscript ofWatchman amid several items in Lee’ssafety deposit box. Although Watch-man had been submitted to (andrejected by) Lee’s editor in 1957, itsplot was set 20 years after Mocking-bird, at a time when Jean Louise(who by then had ditched her child-hood nickname) was a 26-year-oldwoman returning to her hometownof Maycomb in the mid-1950s inorder to spend time with her declin-ing 72-year-old dad after living manyyears in New York City, where shehad moved following her higher edu-cation in Alabama.

Knowing Lee’s history of leavingcollege and law school in Alabamabehind to relocate to Manhattan in1949 to pursue a writing career led tomy prediction that Watchman wouldsurely be the author’s second pub-lished memoir. Eager readers operatedunder the expectation that the flawlessAtticus of Mockingbird would remainso in Watchman, because if Lee wasstill operating with a sound mind (afact disputed by at least some ofMonroeville’s residents) and hadauthorized Carter to arrange for thepublication of Watchman, then surelyshe would not want to diminish readers’devotion to her patron saint father.

Wrong! In Watchman, Atticus’sadult daughter suffers a rude awakeningupon learning that her beloved fatherhas joined the local Citizens’ Council,whose purpose is to resist the high-

speed desegregation movement inAlabama following Brown vs. Boardof Education. These civil rights effortswere being led in the mid-1950s byNAACP members, who Maycombresidents saw as being far too aggres-sive and rapid in their advocacy forequal treatment of African-Americans.Jean Louise simply cannot under-stand how Atticus—the enlightenedlawyer who, during her childhood,had done such a gallant job of repre-senting Tom Robinson, who hadalways been so respectful to all ofMaycomb’s black residents, and whohad always told her never to use theevil N-word—had decided to join thetown’s many bigots on the Citizens’Council. Atticus disgusts his daughterbecause of his refusal to embrace ThomasJefferson’s immortal words that “allmen are created equal” (though Jeffer-son had hypocrisy issues of his own).

In Mockingbird, Atticus Finch, asan honorable person and a highlyethical lawyer, knew he had to do theright thing by providing vigorouslegal representation on behalf of aninnocent black man charged with afelony, knowing that his failure to doso would likely result in Robinson’sbeing convicted and receiving thedeath penalty. In Watchman, however,Atticus finds himself in the mid-1950s presented with a less thanlife-and-death interracial conflict situ-ation and believes that any segmentof American society attempting toeffect instantaneous, full-scale racialintegration at that time—long beforethe 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965Voting Rights Act—was asking for asocially disastrous second post-CivilWar Reconstruction. As a responsi-ble citizen mindful of the fallout thathad occurred during the first Recon-struction, Atticus felt the need to bean active force in slowing the pace ofcivil rights advancement. For him,the only legal vehicle available tothe people of Maycomb that ap-peared capable of doing this was theCitizens’ Council.

Charles Shields’s biography, Mock-ingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee (HenryHolt, 2006), provides details aboutadditional residents who impactedLee’s childhood and then becameimportant characters in her book—most notably a mysterious young mannamed Son Boleware, who inspiredBoo Radley. There also was an African-American criminal defendant namedWalter Lett who, when Lee was eightyears old, was tried and convicted byan all-white jury for allegedly rapinga young white woman, such that hesurely inspired the character of TomRobinson.

Discovering the details behind thecharacters and plot of Mockingbird iswhat led me and others to concludethat the book Oprah Winfrey hascalled “our national novel” is actuallymore memoir than fiction. This inter-pretation would help explain why,after 1960, Lee never wrote anotherbook, because she either (1) lackedthe imagination necessary to create atrue novel, or (2) had said all shehad to say in Mockingbird—some-thing she repeatedly told non-mediainquirers over the past five decades.

Publishing only one book seemsan easy financial decision for Leegiven the significant royalties andpower of the motion picture versionof Mockingbird. In that cinematicclassic, Gregory Peck seized on theonce-in-a-lifetime role of AtticusFinch, and it took him to AcademyAward-winning heights, in part dueto Oscar-winning screenwriter HortonFoote’s decision to expand the role ofAtticus by making the Tom Robinsontrial the movie’s centerpiece. Boththe book and film presented Atticusas a virtuous Christ-like figure in themidst of deeply flawed sinners duringa time of danger and high tension,thereby establishing him as the ulti-mate role model for the legal professionand the greatest hero ever portrayedin a motion picture, per a 2003 Amer-ican Film Institute poll.

All these facts and circumstances

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and that the group’s agenda waslynching and violence, young Atticusimmediately disconnected himselffrom the KKK. It appeared to Atticusthat, unlike the Klan, the council’sagenda did not involve breaking anylaws or committing acts of violence,but rather sought only to pursue aviable legal strategy for counteractingthe NAACP’s plan for expedited full-

scale integration.The appreciation for knowing the

full biography of Harper and AmasaLee, and their stories as portrayed inMockingbird and Watchman, can berealized only now. Per a recent WallStreet Journal article by Jennifer Mal-oney and Laura Stevens, it appearsthat, like Atticus, Amasa disfavoredrapid racial desegregation at least

The reader learns from Dr. JackFinch, Atticus’s brother in Watchman,that Jean Louise’s dad joined the Cit-izens’ Council for the same reason hehad briefly joined the Ku Klux Klanas a young man after the turn of thecentury: to know exactly who theringleaders were and what their ulti-mate agenda was. Upon learning thatthe local Klan’s wizard was a minister

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Gregory Peck is shown as attorney Atticus Finch, a Southern small-town lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape, in a scene from the 1962 movie To Kill A Mockingbird.

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The timing of Watchman’s publi-cation in 2015 is perfect, as wasMockingbird’s in 1960. Both booksemphasize the need for empathy,civility, and humility if people withopposing positions have any hope ofdeveloping a harmonious relation-ship that will allow them to heareach other out and develop a soundstrategy for improving race relationsin America. Tough but wise UncleJack opened Jean Louise’s eyes tothe reality that her angry, adamantrefusal to even consider her dad’sperspective made her as much of abigot as she thought he was; andJack likely had an off-book conver-sation with brother Amasa to thesame effect.

With American society as polar-ized as it is in 2015, in a mode of highvolatility similar to Maycomb’s “sit-tin’ on a keg of dynamite” status in1957, in which people in both erasare “fightin’ to protect their identity,”the following juicy nuggets fromWatchman offer timeless wisdom foranyone attempting to bridge thegreat divide that often arises whenpeople find themselves in heatedconfrontation on political or moralissues:

• Don’t judge others by their wordsor actions until you know theirmotives.

• “A man can condemn his ene-mies, but it’s better to know them.”

• “Hypocrites have as much rightto live in the world as anybodyelse,” particularly because “mentend to carry their honesty inpigeonholes.”

• No one can succeed in life bydependently clinging onto theconscience of someone else, nomatter how virtuous that otherperson may appear to be.

• If a person refuses to take time tounderstand a person holding dif-ferent views, he or she will nevergrow.

• A person’s maintaining civilityand humility while being engaged

in disagreements has a trans-forming effect on the personwho is on the other side of theargument.

• Addressing confrontation overconflicting ideological positionsis “like an airplane. One side isthe drag, the other is the thrust,and together they can fly—though too much of the thrustmakes it nose heavy and toomuch drag and it’s tail heavy—it’s a matter of balance.”

The best part of the Lee familyfather-daughter saga came toward theend of Amasa’s life, when he receivedhis final moment in the sun. AsMockingbird rocketed to the top ofthe New York Times Best Sellers list,where it would stay for 80 consecutiveweeks, and Harper Lee told the worldthat her own lawyer-father had inspiredthe book’s lawyer-father, ecstatic read-ers poured into Monroeville seekingautographs of both the author and herdad. Every time Amasa was handed acopy of To Kill a Mockingbird until theday he died, the name he wrote forhis autograph was Atticus Finch—aman redeemed from his past prejudicesby his own conscience and by hispowerhouse daughter’s appreciation forhis having made that transformation.

Without knowing the full storycontained in Go Set a Watchman,admirers of Harper Lee would neverhave gotten to know how her flawedfather, as portrayed in her secondbook, had evolved into the flawlessAtticus Finch of Mockingbird. TBJ

TALMAGE BOSTONis a shareholder in the Dallas office ofWinstead and the author of Raising theBar: The Crucial Role of the Lawyer inSociety (TexasBarBooks, 2012), the firstchapter of which is titled “The TimelessInspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Atti-cus Finch.” Since 2010, he has givenspeeches across the country on the

subject “What Lawyers Can Learn About Professionalism fromAtticus Finch.”

through the first half of the 1950s.Then he had a change of heart. It mayhave been the result of his ownepiphany as he watched the strugglefor civil rights unfold. Whatever itwas, Amasa Lee eventually got onboardthe high-speed integration train. Thismoral transformation surely had apositive effect on the relationship withhis daughter and, in all likelihood,inspired her to portray Atticus morefavorably in Mockingbird than she hadin her Watchman manuscript. Afterhaving depicted him so heroically inher one and only published book andhaving seen Gregory Peck enhancethe public’s appreciation for him inthe movie, it’s readily understandablewhy Lee decided that she had said allshe ever wanted to say publicly abouther father, who died a few monthsbefore the film’s premiere in late 1962.

Another transformation in Amasamight have occurred by reason of aprobable father-daughter confrontation,which definitely took place betweenAtticus and Jean Louise in Watchman.When Atticus argued his position onwhat the relationship between blacksand whites in Alabama should beand why he believed joining the Cit-izens’ Council at that time was a rea-sonable thing to do, Jean Louiseleveled him between the eyes with herrighteous indignation counter-attack,while Atticus somehow remained calmand didn’t stop being a gentleman.This was likely a real-life circumstancegiven Lee’s forceful personality andher enlightened attitude on race rela-tions. Fortunately for both Atticus andJean Louise, Dr. Jack Finch intervenedand acted as Jean Louise’s post-argu-ment conscience, encouraging her tostrive to gain at least some under-standing of Atticus’s position andalso to regain her emotional equilib-rium. She, in fact, heeded her uncle’sadvice, and after accepting her dad’sdifferent political/moral positions,she and Atticus found a way to lookeach other in the eyes and affirm theirlove and respect for one another.

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