It came as quite a shock to many Americans over this past weekend when reports began to trickle out that one of our moral heroes from the past 50 years, a man who stood up to racial inequality in Alabama, might actually be a racist himself.
Atticus Finch, the voice of reason in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird, was outed as an attendee of Klan meetings and possibly held an anti-integration stance in Go Set A Watchman, a newly discovered novel by author Harper Lee. Whether you believe that Go Set A Watchman was the original iteration of To Kill A Mockingbird, or some hack job novel pulled from a decades-old manuscript to make millions of dollars for Lee’s lawyer and publisher HarperCollins, it did little to stop the fact that one of America’s great literary heroes now had some fatal flaws.
For most of us who have read and enjoyed To Kill A Mockingbird, most likely in high school, this news was met with some disappointment, but it didn’t affect our day-to-day lives. For thousands of other fans, myself included, this news was met with disappointment, and possibly even a moment of worry because as parents we had decided “Atticus” was a great name for a son.
Atticus really is a great name. It’s so great, in fact, that it took little convincing on my part for my wife to agree to give that name to our oldest son five years ago. And for five years, we’ve been discussing our love of To Kill A Mockingbird, and Atticus Finch, whenever someone asked us our son’s name. Now, it seems that a new discussion will happen when the question, “What is your son’s name?” is asked, or possibly no discussion at all.
But none of that really matters. Not the shady “discovery” of a long-lost novel by a now 89-year-old woman with possible mental health issues that was written over 50 years ago. Not the obvious money grab by her lawyer and a large publishing house. Not the people who made Go Set A Watchman an instant best-seller. Not even To Kill A Mockingbird, or the Academy Award winning performance by Gregory Peck that further cemented our idea of who Atticus Finch is.
None of that matters because my son is not Atticus Finch. His name does not make him who he is now, and it will not make him who he will be in the future. He is his own person, and he is my favorite Atticus.
He likes Star Wars, playing baseball, and telling terrible “knock-knock” jokes. He dresses himself in ridiculous outfits only a five-year-old could get away with and watches PBS cartoons. He’s had stitches, black eyes, and scraped knees, but thankfully no broken bones. On nature hikes, he’ll point out butterflies, birds, and the other day, he noticed a snake in a stone fence. He moved closer to the snake instead of backing away, much to my chagrin.
My son is also very inquisitive, which means that someday he will ask me why he is named Atticus. When he does, I’ll grab my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird off the bookshelf and we’ll read and discuss Maycomb County, Scout, Jem and Dill, the trial of Tom Robinson, the Ewells, and the larger than life, and possibly racist, Atticus Finch.
He’s my favorite Atticus for so many reasons that it would take thousands of words for me to list them all, and he’ll do so many other things over the course of his life to further distance himself, in my mind, from his namesake.
I have no desire to read Go Set A Watchman, and if the reviews are correct, I may not want to waste my time. For over 50 years, Atticus Finch made an impression on millions of Americans, and if this new novel does affect the way people think of Atticus Finch, that would be the biggest tragedy of this novel’s publication.
