Summary: Chapter 1
The protagonist of this book is Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, a twenty-six-year-old woman from Maycomb, Alabama. At the beginning of the novel, Jean Louise is on a train from New York City to Maycomb Junction for her annual trip home. She usually flies, but this time, she wanted to spare her father, Atticus Finch, the inconvenience of driving over a hundred miles to pick her up. Jean Louise reminisces about a long-departed, insane relative, Cousin Joshua, who fancied himself a great poet.

Maycomb is such a small, sleepy town that Jean Louise has to remind the conductor not to forget to let her off the train. She gets off at Maycomb Junction, which is actually twenty miles away. Maycomb County is strangely shaped because of political gerrymandering, and it is so cut off from the rest of the South that some of its oldest citizens still vote Republican, even ninety years after the Civil War, when the entire rest of the South votes Democrat.

When the train pulls into Maycomb Junction, Jean Louise expects Atticus to be waiting there for her, but he is not. Instead, Henry Clinton, her lifelong childhood friend and now suitor, appears and kisses her. Henry tells Jean Louise that Atticus’s arthritis is bothering him, so he drives her home instead.

Henry had been best friends with Jean Louise’s older brother, Jem. When Jem suddenly dropped dead of a heart condition, Atticus hired Henry to become his junior associate at his law practice. Although Henry treats Atticus like a father, he treats Jean Louise like a lover. Even though Henry only gets to see Jean Louise for two weeks every year, they date whenever she is home, and he is convinced that they are going to get married. Jean Louise isn’t so sure. She tells Henry that she wants to have an affair with him, but not marry him. When Henry gets hurt, she apologizes, and they back off the subject, teasing and flirting with each other more lightly.

Summary: Chapter 2
Atticus has problems physically because of his arthritis, but he is still very sharp mentally. When Jean Louise and Henry arrive, Atticus and his sister, Alexandra Finch Hancock, greet them. Alexandra and Jean Louise have always bickered constantly, and they both have short fuses. They gossip about people in town. Alexandra criticizes Jean Louise’s outfit because Jean Louise is wearing casual slacks, and Jean Louise starts to snap at her, when Atticus stops her. Jean Louise asks Atticus about his arthritis, and Atticus tells her that it’s none of her business. They briefly discuss politics, and the NAACP as well as the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education are brought up, but the conversation moves away from these issues.

Summary: Chapter 3
Alexandra is a very imposing, opinionated figure, and she and Jean Louise have butted heads since Jean Louise’s childhood. When Jean Louise comes home to visit, she and Alexandra continue to disagree about everything. Although Alexandra is still technically married, her husband moved out to his fishing camp fifteen years ago and has never returned. Alexandra doesn’t care that her husband has gone, and she maintains her prominent position in Maycomb society. When Jem died, Alexandra told Jean Louise that Atticus needed her to stay at home and take care of him. Jean Louise argued that Atticus would want her to follow her ambitions, and Alexandra told her that she was being thoughtless. Now that Atticus’s arthritis has gotten worse, Alexandra has moved in with Atticus, and Jean Louise is secretly grateful.
Alexandra announces, to Jean Louise’s chagrin, that she is hosting a Coffee for her, which is a gathering of Maycomb ladies to scrutinize someone who has moved away. Jean Louise casually asks what Alexandra would think if Jean Louise married Henry, and Alexandra replies that Henry’s background isn’t quite up to the standards of the Finch family. When Jean Louise retorts that Atticus would love the match, Alexandra snaps back that Henry will never be suitable, which makes Jean Louise even more piqued. Henry picks her up for a Saturday evening date.

ANALYSIS
Even though Jean Louise has grown up and lives independently, she is still deeply connected to her roots in Maycomb. By taking a train from New York City to Maycomb, Jean Louise is not only traveling through space, she’s also traveling through time. The town is steeped in layers of memories and nostalgia. But Jean Louise does not just have a beautiful, rosy recollection of life in Maycomb. She knows that she’s moved forward with her life in many respects, and that she does not share the same values and goals as people still living there. But Jean Louise is still inextricably tethered to Maycomb in a deep way. Maycomb will always be her home, even though home might be a very uncomfortable place to be.

Jean Louise’s ancestors haunt Maycomb. Her family has lived in or near Maycomb for several generations, so all of her roots are firmly planted in this spot.

From the moment Jean Louise gets off the train, there is the hint that things are starting to change, since her old childhood friend / crush / lover Henry Clinton picks her up from the station. In the past, Atticus had always come to fetch her. Now, Henry fills the role of primary protector in Jean Louise’s life. Atticus can no longer be the guardian figure in Jean Louise’s life. She must grow up and develop her own familial relationships.

The relationship between Jean Louise and Henry is…complicated. They’re definitely more than just friends, but they’re not exactly a couple, since they only see each other once a year. They date regularly and seem very seriously together in the two weeks Jean Louise comes to visit, but it seems like they don’t really communicate that much for the rest of the year. Throughout the novel, Henry is consistent about what he wants from their relationship. Henry would like to marry Jean Louise and have her settle down with him in Maycomb. Jean Louise, on the other hand, is deeply conflicted. On the one hand, she does love Henry, but on the other, she’s not ready to settle down and marry him, and she’s not sure that they’re ultimately right for each other.

Jean Louise’s conflict about her relationship with Henry mirrors her complicated relationship with Maycomb itself. Although she feels like her opinions often directly oppose the majority view of people in town, she also knows that Maycomb is her home.
But Maycomb is changing, and it is hard for Jean Louise to reconcile her past recollections of Maycomb with her present perception of the town. One change that Jean Louise has already had to grapple with is the death of her older brother, Jem, who passed away suddenly of heart failure in his early twenties. Jean Louise had always looked up to Jem, and Henry had been Jem’s best friend. Henry is now like a son to Atticus. Henry is Atticus’s junior partner in his law firm, a role Jem would have most likely fulfilled had he lived. Jean Louise and Henry seem to have grown closer through their bond over the loss of a person they both deeply loved.

Another person with whom Jean Louise has a complicated relationship is her aunt, Alexandra. Jean Louise and Alexandra have butted heads ever since Jean Louise was a child. Alexandra knows just how to say the one thing that is guaranteed to get on Jean Louise’s nerves, and Jean Louise can’t stop herself from snapping back. Jean Louise knows that she’s not the proper Southern belle that Alexandra presents as an ideal model of womanhood, and she deliberately presses Alexandra’s buttons by wearing modern clothing and asserting her independence.

Jean Louise and Alexandra aren’t completely antagonistic, however. Jean Louise recognizes that Alexandra has had to fill the role of wife and daughter as well as sister in Atticus’s life. Atticus’s wife died when Jean Louise was very young, and Jean Louise doesn’t return to Maycomb after college, so when Jem dies, Atticus is essentially alone. Alexandra is also somewhat alone in the world. She is essentially unmarried, since she is estranged from her husband and hasn’t spoken to him in fifteen years. She also does not have a close relationship with her son. So Alexandra has entered the Finch family partly because she and Atticus both lack companionship. Even though Jean Louise doesn’t agree with Alexandra most of the time, blood ties run deep, and they do care about each other a great deal.

The person who seems to be the one rock-solid foundation in Jean Louise’s life is her father, Atticus Finch. Growing up, Jean Louise always relied on her father for moral and emotional guidance. Recently, her father’s arthritis has weakened him physically, but he still works every day in his law practice, and his mind seems as sharp as ever. Jean Louise thinks of Atticus as her anchor: as long as she can count on him to be her moral compass, everything else will sort itself out.
Summary: Chapter 4
According to town lore, Maycomb is located where it is today because of the cunning maneuvers of a tavern owner in the town’s early days. Maycomb has stayed nearly the same size for 150 years, and since people rarely come but rarely leave, the same families continue to marry each other over and over. The Cunninghams and the Coninghams intermarry so frequently that legal disputes arise over which side of the family is which. Maycomb didn’t even have a paved street until 1935. But after World War II, the town grew and modernized.

As they finish their dinner, Jean Louise and Henry decide to drive out to Finch’s Landing, which is the Finch family’s old plantation, on the river, about twenty miles outside Maycomb. Jean Louise tells Henry about lots of unhappy couples in New York where the wives are insecure and the husbands have affairs.

Summary: Chapter 5
Jean Louise bumps her head getting into Henry’s car. She and Henry remember a time when they were children and Atticus was driving them to go swimming. Atticus had a roll-top car, and Jem fell out of the car on the way there. They stop for a swig of whisky from an undercover watering hole, and then they head out to Finch’s Landing.

Jean Louise thinks about Henry’s past. Although Henry had gone to law school, his real legal education began when he went to work for Atticus. Henry asks Jean Louise about Dill, the friend who played with Jean Louise and Jem all summer long, when Henry was never around to play with them. Dill went to Europe during World War II and stayed there.

Jean Louise has a flashback to the summer when Jem was eleven. She, Jem, and Dill decide to make up a story about a popular character named Tom Swift. Jem tells Jean Louise and Dill what to say. Calpurnia gives them all lemonade.

Jean Louis, Jem, and Dill decide to re-enact a revival meeting. Visiting preachers often held revivals in the Maycomb churches, and that week, Reverend Moorehead was preaching against sin in the Baptist church. They decide to hold their re-enactment in Dill’s aunt Miss Rachel’s fishpool. Jem plays Reverend Moorehead, and Dill and Jean Louise are the congregation. Jem gives a long sermon about sin, then gives a description of heaven, which is filled with Dill’s and Jean Louise’s favorite foods.
Jean Louise strips off her overalls and gets ready to duck in to the fishpool to be “baptized.” Dill runs into the house and re-emerges in a bed sheet, pretending to be the Holy Ghost. Jem holds Jean Louise under the water. Suddenly, Miss Rachel appears and starts to whip Dill for ruining her bed sheets.

Jem and Jean Louise turn to return home, but when they do, Atticus is standing in the driveway next to Reverend Moorehead and the preacher’s wife. Too late, Jean Louise realizes she’s stark naked. At home, Calpurnia roughly scrubs Jean Louise, scolds her, and shoves her into a dress. Reverend Moorehead and his wife are having dinner at the Finch household. When Reverend Moorehead says grace, he asks the Lord to forgive Jem and Jean Louise because they are motherless children. Atticus goes red in the face and leaves the table abruptly. Jean Louise asks Calpurnia if he’s crying, and Calpurnia announces to the whole table that he’s laughing.

Jean Louise’s flashback ends, and she is back in the car driving with Henry. They arrive at Finch’s Landing. Her old family homestead is now a hunting club. Atticus’s grandfather had bought the house, and Atticus and Alexandra had been born there. Atticus and his siblings all moved into town, and the land got sold off piece by piece. After Jean Louise’s grandmother died, the house stood empty until men from Mobile bought it and turned it into the club.

Jean Louise and Henry race down the steep steps to the docks at the river. Jean Louise describes her conflicted feelings about living in New York versus living in Maycomb, and Henry tells her that at some point, she’ll have to choose. Henry says that he’s thinking about running for the Maycomb County legislature. Jean Louise and Henry kiss, but she doesn’t agree to marry him. Instead, she pushes him into the river, and he pulls her in with him.

When Jean Louise and Henry are driving back to Maycomb, a carload of black people drives by them at high speed. Henry says that black people have enough money to buy cars, but they don’t have driver’s licenses and insurance. Henry drives Jean Louise home, and she falls asleep reading about the Punic War.

ANALYSIS
Try as Maycomb County might to resist change, the South is going through transitions that are not without growing pains. When Jean Louise bumps her head as she’s getting into Henry’s car, she’s not just being a klutz. Bumping her head on the car symbolically means that she doesn’t fit into the Maycomb world anymore. She also doesn’t fit effortlessly into Henry’s life. Although she and Henry are compatible and enjoy spending time together, Henry does want a certain kind of wife and family to support his respectable, middle-class career, and Jean Louise has grown up to become an independent woman.
The deep traditions and time-honored Southern ways of life, which Maycomb County had clung to even long after Civil War, are finally crumbling. The fact that Finch’s Landing no longer belongs to the Finches represents the family’s own quiet fading. The Finches are no longer a robust Southern dynasty, and their time-honored family reunions are a thing of the past. The sale of Finch’s Landing to the hunting club represents a broader trend in the South during the nineteen-fifties. The family homesteads and old traditions are being thoroughly eradicated and replaced with new businesses and modernization.

Just because Jean Louise’s family doesn’t own Finch’s Landing anymore doesn’t mean that she doesn’t own it in her heart, however. She’ll always have the memories of what this place meant to her while she was growing up. Jean Louise sees Maycomb with a sort of double vision. On the one hand, she recognizes the changes that have happened in the present day. On the other hand, she also sees the town in the same way that she saw it as a child. Finch’s Landing might be technically a hunting club now, but to Jean Louise, it will always symbolize not only her family’s past, but a bygone, genteel way of life.

When Jean Louise has a flashback to her childhood, she’s the age of the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. In that later book, which is a re-working of Go Set a Watchman, the entire novel takes place when Jean Louise is a child, and Henry doesn’t exist in the novel as a character. The introduction of Henry into Jean Louise’s life signals her entrance into womanhood. Go Set a Watchman is about a young woman looking back with nostalgia to her past, so every flashback seems wistful. To Kill a Mockingbird is about a child who doesn’t yet know that she should be nostalgic for her past, which makes every scene extremely poignant. To Kill a Mockingbird does take the perspective of a grown-up Jean Louise reminiscing about her youth, but the details of her adult life are never shown, and the primary narrative is of childhood, not adulthood.

In the flashback, Jean Louise, Jem, and Dill take the real events and turn them into a game. As children, they can still remain in their own world and have their own interpretation of life. They are safe from the ugly truths of the real world because they live in their imaginations. And when they do enter reality, they can trust that Atticus will keep them safe.

Throughout Jean Louise’s childhood, Calpurnia had always been a loyal and essential member of the family. Calpurnia both scolds and mothers Jean Louise. It doesn’t matter to Jean Louise whether Calpurnia is black or white, because Jean Louise fears and respects her for her strict and imposing yet compassionate and fiercely proud attitude

The re-enacted church revival scene that Jean Louise remembers foreshadows many of Jean Louise’s present-day character traits. She is still stubborn, rebellious, and wants to keep up with everyone. The way that Jem, Dill, and Jean Louise play games illustrates their childhood dynamic. Jem is the leader, Dill is the creative one who always wants to twist and re-interpret the game, and Jean Louise insists that she can keep up just as well as the rest of them. The childhood dynamic between Jem, Dill, and Jean Louise is different than the adolescent relationship that develops between Jem, Henry, and Jean Louise. Jem and Henry are friends independently of Jean Louise, but Henry and Jean Louise begin to show glimmers of a relationship that goes beyond friendship and doesn’t involve Jem. Jem, for his part, has his own romantic relationships with other girls. The triangle of friendship had equal sides as children, but in adolescence, the nature of the relationships shift.

The fake revival scene reflects many of the ways in which Maycomb still operates. All the members of Maycomb’s various churches go to revival meetings, no matter which church is the host church, which demonstrates Maycomb citizens’ penchant for group decisions and their tendency to think and act as a hive. People in town like to gather in big, like-minded groups, almost regardless of what the group is actually doing.

Young Jean Louise’s dunk in the fishpool also foreshadows her impulsive decision to pull Henry into the river with her at Finch’s Landing. Jean Louise wants to reclaim her past, where she felt safe and felt like she belonged seamlessly. Jean Louise can make the physical leap into the river with Henry, but mentally and emotionally, she’s still deeply conflicted over whether she should leap into their relationship and bond with him for the rest of her life.

The carload of black people that drives past Jean Louise and Henry at high speed is another symbol of the changes happening in the South. Henry, like many white Southerners, is afraid that black people are becoming much too powerful much too quickly in the South, and that their influence will flood society and completely wipe away life as everyone knows it. black people are seen as dangerous, uncontrollable menaces. Jean Louise sees no reason why they should be treated any differently than one would treat white people, but she is definitely in the minority among the society in which she grew up.

The car of black people driving incredibly fast also foreshadows events that happen later in the novel. Zeebo’s son is driving a car and kills a white pedestrian, and Atticus agrees to take his case, mostly to keep the NAACP out of Maycomb. Race relations are careening out of control in the town.

Throughout Go Set a Watchman, cars often symbolize transition and moments of not fitting in. Jean Louise frequently bumps her head as she enters cars in Maycomb, suggesting both her inability to fit in and her resistance to getting swept along with the current of public opinion. The car also symbolizes Maycomb’s own transition to modernity. The town is getting bigger and more modern, with more paved streets, so the outside world can enter Maycomb more easily. Maycomb is twenty miles from the train station and twenty miles from the river, so even though it’s the country seat, the town has historically enjoyed isolation. However, with more and more cars, more people of all races and beliefs are entering town and threatening to disrupt the town’s accustomed rhythms.
Summary: Chapter 6
Alexandra wakes Jean Louise up by screaming at her, since the whole town is buzzing with the gossip that she and Henry had been swimming naked in the river. Atticus is much more sanguine. He sees the humor in the situation.

They go to church, where Uncle Jack is waiting for them on the church steps. Uncle Jack is ten years younger than Atticus. Atticus paid for Uncle Jack’s medical education, and was eventually paid back, but supporting his brother prevented Atticus from starting his own family until age forty. Uncle Jack did so well that he retired early and now spends his days reading Victorian literature. Jean Louise goes into Sunday School and promptly dozes off.

Summary: Chapter 7
Jean Louise and Alexandra sit on one side of the church while Uncle Jack and Atticus sit together on the other. After collection, the Maycomb Methodists sing a hymn they call the Doxology, which they’ve sung the same way for generations. This Sunday, however, the music director, Herbert Jemson, directs the organist to play it with a completely different rhythm. The congregation does not alter, and the result is cacophony.

Mr. Stone the new minister, takes his text from the Bible, specifically twenty-first chapter of Isaiah, verse six: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, / Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. (Sound familiar?) Jean Louise can’t concentrate on the sermon, since she’s too busy being indignant at the music. After the service, Uncle Jack scolds Herbert for messing up the Doxology. Herbert says that a music instructor from New Jersey had recently told him to pep up Southern hymns like the Doxology. Uncle Jack scoffs.

Summary: Chapter 8
On Sunday afternoon, Henry and Atticus go to a political meeting at the courthouse. Jean Louise finds a pamphlet in the living room titled “The Black Plague.” The pamphlet is full of racist declarations, such as claiming that black people are inferior because their skulls are thicker. Jean Louise is horrified. Alexandra tells Jean Louise that Atticus had brought it home from a meeting of the Maycomb County Citizen’s Council.

Jean Louise marches to the courthouse and sneaks up to the Colored balcony, where she and Jem used to watch Atticus litigate. All the men of Maycomb, from the least reputable to the most respected, are there. Atticus and Henry are there, too. The only man not present is Uncle Jack.
Atticus introduces a man who gives a racist speech, claiming that God intended races to stay apart. Jean Louise is appalled. She has a flashback to her childhood, when her father defended a one-armed black man against allegations of rape. Atticus won the case, and the one-armed man is acquitted. (This case is the center of the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird, although the verdict is different in that book.)

The man in the courtroom continues to give his racist speech. As Jean Louise watches Atticus and Henry silently watching the racist man, she feels sick and leaves the courthouse in disgust. Jean Louise stops by her old house, which has been converted into an ice cream parlor. The man running the shop gives Jean Louise ice cream, and she takes it to her former back yard. She feels betrayed by her father, the one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted.

Summary: Chapter 9
Integrity, humor, and patience are three words that are always used to describe Atticus. His private character is his public character. Atticus got married when he was forty to a woman fifteen years his junior. Two years after Jean Louise was born, his wife died of a heart attack. Atticus raised Jem and Jean Louise on his own with the help of Calpurnia, a black cook and surrogate mother figure. He read to Jem and Jean Louise constantly from whatever he happened to be reading at the time, from military history to legislative bills to the Bible.

After high school, Atticus sent her to a women’s college in Georgia, then sent her to New York to make her own way in the world. Jean Louise has always considered Atticus as the most powerful moral force in her life, and she had never before questioned this rock-solid conviction.

Summary: Chapter 10
Jean Louise vomits, still wanting to believe that the courthouse meeting had been a horrible mistake. She finally leaves the ice cream parlor and returns back to her father’s new house. Jean Louise telephones Uncle Jack and says she’ll see him tomorrow. She tells Alexandra to tell Henry that she’s ill. She goes upstairs and falls asleep, emotionally exhausted.

ANALYSIS
Even though Jean Louise is a grown woman, Alexandra still scolds her as though she is a child. Alexandra still puts Jean Louise in the role of a child while Jean Louise is home, reinforcing the power dynamic they have always had. Now, however, Jean Louise’s reactions are different than they used to be. Jean Louise was ashamed as a girl when the preacher saw her dripping wet after dunking in the fish pond, but now, even though the town is gossiping about her midnight swim with Henry, Jean Louise is more amused than abashed.

The congregation’s rigid adherence to the way it has always sung the Doxology symbolizes Maycomb’s desire to retain its accustomed practices and procedures. Even when the music tries to push them into a new direction, people firmly resist change and stand grounded in their beliefs and worldviews. The town fiercely clings to the everyday customs that make up daily life.

The dogmatic Doxology is an amusing example of Maycomb’s resistance to outside influence, but the townspeople’s resistance to change proves much more sinister in terms of race relations. “The Black Plague,” the pamphlet that Jean Louise discovers in Atticus’s house, expresses very racist views as though they are facts. Reading this pamphlet is really the first time that Jean Louise is confronted directly with racism upon her return home to Maycomb. Up till this point, she can live halfway in nostalgia for her youth and halfway in the present, not paying attention to the rampant segregation and racism that rules the town. Jean Louise could also tell herself that even if other townspeople were racist, Atticus followed his own strict moral compass. Now, her rock-solid belief in her father crumbles.

The Maycomb County Citizens’ Council is not dissimilar to the Ku Klux Klan, as both are organizations dedicated to white supremacy. Uncle Jack’s absence from the meeting suggests that Uncle Jack, like Jean Louise, marches to the beat of a slightly different drummer than the rest of Maycomb’s citizens. Then again, Uncle Jack’s interaction with Maycomb is not necessarily sustainable in the long term. On the one hand, Uncle Jack has unshakeable morals and doesn’t have to be a public enough figure to get along with everyone. However, Uncle Jack also hides his head in his books, burying himself in literature rather than facing the world’s ugly truths.

The scene in which Jean Louise sneaks into the courtroom to watch the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council meeting is very reminiscent of the climax of To Kill a Mockingbird. In that novel, Jem and Jean Louise sneak into the Colored balcony of the courthouse to watch Atticus litigate during the trial of the one-armed black man who has been accused of rape. Atticus defends the man. This trial is only a passing memory in Go Set a Watchman, but the event is the crux of To Kill a Mockingbird’s plot.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, the black man accused of rape is found guilty. In Go Set a Watchman, however, the man is acquitted. The altered outcome changes the case’s impact on the story as a whole. Atticus is on the side of justice in To Kill a Mockingbird, but the unjust verdict amplifies the divide between Atticus and the rest of the town. When Atticus stands up for a man and the rest of the town finds the man guilty, Atticus’s moral backbone seems firmer than ever by comparison. However, in Go Set a Watchman, the stakes of the court case and its impact on the rest of the novel are lowered. Atticus has proven his point legally, which results in the acquittal. Atticus therefore doesn’t seem as resolute in his moral beliefs despite the opinions of the town. He wins over the case, demonstrating both his legal prowess and that he might not have to be as staunch and firm a bastion against opposing beliefs as he appears to be in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticu’s status as a lawyer who stands on the right side of justice even when the court rules against him amplifies his role as an idol in Jean Louise’s eyes. On the other hand, in Go Set a Watchman, Atticus is merely a lawyer who has won a tough case.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jean Louise is proud of Atticus as she watches him from the balcony, since he is arguing on the side of justice and equality. However, in Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise is horrified as she watches Atticus in the courtroom. To Jean Louise, the very fact that Atticus is in this meeting at all means that he is a hypocrite, claiming to value equality when in fact he accepts racism. Atticus himself doesn’t say anything that could be condemned. Atticus merely introduces the speaker in a very neutral fashion. But Jean Louise hears the speaker’s speech as though Atticus himself has said every word, and she internalizes its message as matching Atticus’s beliefs.

Even though Henry was also at the meeting, Jean Louise is most upset over Atticus’s presence in the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council. Jean Louise recalls her childhood, in which Atticus always represented the model of honesty and integrity. When Jean Louise refuses to see Henry the night after the Council meeting, she is angry at Henry for being a hypocrite, but she is most deeply upset over what she perceives as Atticus’s betrayal. The fact that Jean Louise is far more shaken by Atticus’s action than Henry’s, even though both men were in the courthouse for the meeting, symbolizes that Jean Louise’s bond with Henry does not truly run very deep. Jean Louise’s anger prods her to remember scenes from her childhood involving Atticus in which Henry does not appear. To be sure, Jean Louise is furious with Henry for attending the meeting, but his presence doesn’t rattle her emotional core the way Atticus’s does.

Summary: Chapter 11
Jean Louise has a flashback to sixth grade. That year, there are several children from Old Sarum, a nearby rural area, temporarily in the Maycomb school, and Jean Louise enjoys the company of the rougher farm kids. When she begins to menstruate for the first time, she returns to school after lunch very glum, and the Old Sarum kids quickly figure out what’s going on. One of the farm boys, Albert, kisses her with his tongue.

Jean Louise’s friend Ada Belle tells Jean Louise that a girl’s daddy had gotten her pregnant by French-kissing her. Jean Louise is terrified and becomes convinced that she is pregnant because Albert had French-kissed her. Instead of talking to Calpurnia or Atticus, she keeps her secret and tries to cobble together all the information she can. Jean Louise feels deeply ashamed and becomes miserably convinced that she will have her baby in October. As a result, she decides to kill herself on the thirtieth of September.

When September 30 comes, Jean Louise climbs the ladder on the town water-tank. She looks out over the town and thinks about how to jump, Henry grabs her and carries her down the ladder. Henry starts to yell at her, but when he sees her trembling, he knows that something is wrong.

Jean Louise finally confesses her whole story to Calpurnia. Calpurnia reassures her that she is not pregnant and explains about the birds and the bees. Jean Louise finally breathes a sigh of relief. Calpurnia says that if Jean Louise’s mother had still been alive, she would have learned about this long ago, but that it’s hard for Atticus to explain such things by himself. For the first time, Calpurnia had called her “ma’am” and “Miss Scout,” treating her like a woman rather than a little girl.

That night, she teases Jem, who now goes to high school and is trying to make it onto the football team. Jem tells her that if there’s anything that she ever wants to talk to him about, or if she ever gets in trouble at school, she should come and tell him, because he’ll take care of her.

Summary: Chapter 12
After passing out in emotional exhaustion on Sunday afternoon, Jean Louise wakes up at five o’clock on Monday morning. She goes out to smoke and feels numb, but she knows that the numbness is only temporary. She decides to mow the lawn. At first, she can’t get the mower started, but after a black milk boy comes to deliver the milk, she gets the mower to work. Alexandra, who is already wearing a corset at this early hour, comes outside to tell her to stop.
Atticus has to eat breakfast with utensils jammed into big wooden spools, since his arthritis prevents him from handling normal utensils. When he picks up his milk glass, the milk spills, and Jean Louise helps clean it up. She wonders how he can look the same after yesterday’s meeting.

Henry comes in and tells Jean Louise that he had seen her in the balcony yesterday. Henry asks Jean Louise if everything is all right, but Jean Louise doesn’t tell him how horrified she had been. Henry tells Atticus that Zeebo’s son ran over and killed old Mr. Healy. Zeebo is Calpurnia’s son.

Atticus says that they will take the case to defend Zeebo’s son, and Jean Louise is relieved. Atticus and Henry discuss why it’s a strategic advantage for Atticus to take the case. Apparently, lawyers paid for by the NAACP wait like hawks for cases involving black people, and they make a huge fuss about making sure that black people are on the jury, so it’s easier for everyone if these lawyers don’t have the opportunity to become involved.

Jean Louise mechanically agrees to meet Henry again that night for a date. She goes to the grocery store, where the owner, who has known her all her life, asks Jean Louise why she hasn’t moved back to Maycomb yet. Jean Louise puts the groceries on Atticus’s tab.

Jean Louise returns home, picks up her father, and drops him off at the barbershop. She drives to Calpurnia’s house, where a crowd of the town’s most prominent and well-respected black citizens has gathered. When Jean Louise arrives, people stiffen, remove their hats, and part ways to let her through. Zeebo leads her into the house to see Calpurnia.

Calpurnia has shrunk in her old age. Jean Louise tells Calpurnia that Atticus will help Zeebo. Calpurnia replies with bad grammar, which Jean Louise instantly recognizes as Calpurnia’s company manners. Jean Louise implores Calpurnia to take off her company attitude, but Calpurnia doesn’t flinch, and there is no hint of compassion in her eyes.
Jean Louise remembers when Jem came back from the war and gave Calpurnia a jacket that Calpurnia loved. When Jem died, Calpurnia was as distraught as all the Finches, since she loved Jem as though he were her own child. Jean Louise asks Calpurnia if Calpurnia hates her and her family, and Calpurnia finally shakes her head no.

Jean Louise asks Zeebo to help her maneuver her car back into the road. She remembers how devastated Calpurnia had been when Jem had died.

ANALYSIS
Jean Louise’s flashback to sixth grade, when she had recently gotten her period and is just beginning to discover what sex is, has many symbolic layers. In the flashback, Jean Louise is terrified that she had gotten pregnant after French-kissing a boy, since one of the girls at school tells her that people get pregnant after French-kissing each other. The information haunts her, foreshadowing the power of unwanted knowledge to haunt people throughout the novel.

Jean Louise remembers what it’s like to grow up from being a girl into being a woman at the very point in the novel when she has just become disillusioned about Atticus’s morality and integrity. It’s no coincidence that Jean Louise remembers becoming a woman at the same time as she is losing her faith in her father. Although she became an adult physically long ago, now, she’s dealing with the same sort of earth-shaking, profoundly flip-flopping emotions that appear in puberty.

Another layer of symbolism around the flashback in which Jean Louise starts growing up from a child to a woman is that it represents one of the few times in Jean Louise’s childhood in which Atticus doesn’t have all the answers. When Jean Louise begins to menstruate, Atticus didn’t properly and thoroughly explain the facts of human sexuality, so Jean Louise must create her own theories secondhand from what she can glean from schoolyard knowledge. Jean Louise keeps the secret of her “pregnancy” to herself for months, not telling anyone else her fear that she will have a baby in the fall. Jean Louise’s understanding of how pregnancy actually works is limited at best.

When Jean Louise was growing up, any false information she acquired always came from outside the family, and she learned that she could rely on those that she trusted to guide her correctly. Jean Louise develops the wild idea that she is pregnant and that this will cause her family much shame and distress by her interactions with the other kids at school. But when she finally confesses her belief to Calpurnia, Calpurnia, like a mother, soothes her and sets her on the right path. Jean Louise learns to trust her family at all times, no matter what the outside world might lead her to believe.

Atticus is a wonderfully caring and supportive father, but the time when Jean Louise is growing up from a girl into a woman represents a parenting moment in which Atticus has to relinquish the reins. Atticus didn’t adequately prepare Jean Louise for what it would mean to become a woman, so Jean Louise had to figure it out on her own. And when Jean Louise makes an error in her thinking, Calpurnia, not Atticus, is the one who corrects her. Calpurnia serves as Jean Louis’s surrogate mother figure, which is part of what makes the idea that Atticus could be a racist so much more deeply and personally terrifying.

Henry eventually saves Jean Louise, climbing heroically up the water tower like a prince rescuing a princess trapped at the top of her turret. At the time, the young Jean Louise didn’t think much of the fact that Henry was her rescuer. However, the scene foreshadows Henry’s current role in Jean Louise’s life as the lover figure who will always be there for her, no matter what else happens. Now, just as then, Jean Louise is grateful for Henry’s presence. In the flashback, he quite literally brings her back to earth, whereas he fills this role more metaphorically in the present day.

When Jean Louise finds out that Atticus has agreed to defend Zeebo’s son, Calpurnia’s grandson, she’s relieved at first, since she thinks that it proves that Atticus is, in fact, just as moral and fair as she’s always thought that he was. But it turns out that Atticus is less interested in saving Calpurnia’s family and more interested in smoothing over potential disruption from the NAACP. If the NAACP gets involved, the case will become long, elaborate, and drawn-out. Atticus and Henry don’t want the NAACP meddling in the town’s affairs, since they want to solve local matters in the way they’ve always been solved. Atticus always puts equality, peace, and the law first. Jean Louise has always perceived these as good traits, but now, these traits have become frustrating and feel to Jean Louise like an obstruction of justice.

Jean Louise’s visit to Calpurnia shows Jean Louise exactly how strained race relations have become in Maycomb. In Jean Louise’s childhood, segregation dominated the town, but Jean Louise was able to ignore some of its uglier sides, partly because Calpurnia was always such an integral part of her family life. Even though Jean Louise knew that segregation and racism were problems, she was able to stay inside the safe world that her family had created. Now, however, Jean Louise feels deeply like she’s an outsider when she goes to visit Calpurnia. The people part to let her pass like she’s Moses coming through the Red Sea.

Calpurnia spurns Jean Louise, withdrawing herself from her affections. Calpurnia feels betrayed, just as Jean Louise does, by Atticus’s hypocrisy. Calpurnia extends her feelings of betrayal not just to Atticus but to all the Finches. Jean Louise feels rejected and devastated by Calpurnia’s spurning. Jean Louise begins to cry, begging Calpurnia to drop her company manners and treat Jean Louise as she always has, but Calpurnia remains cold.

Summary: Chapter 13
When Jean Louise returns home, Alexandra is in the midst of preparing elaborate sandwich platters for Jean Louise’s Coffee. Alexandra is furious when Jean Louise tells her that she had gone to visit Calpurnia. Alexandra says that ever since the NAACP had arrived in town, the organization had filled black people’s ears with poison against white people, and that relations between the two races were strained. When Calpurnia left, says Alexandra, she couldn’t be bothered to train a new servant because black people were too difficult to keep happy.

Jean Louise feels like she’s going insane. Her aunt is hostile, Calpurnia won’t talk to her, Henry is insane, and Atticus has betrayed her. She thinks that something must be the matter with her, because it’s unfathomable that everyone else could have changed so profoundly.

The ladies arrive for the Coffee. They’re all dolled up in natty clothes and elaborate makeup. The newlyweds talk about their husbands, the new mothers discuss their children, and the woman who are slightly older discuss domestic affairs. Jean Louise tries to talk with the single girls, but all they want to do is gossip about high school friends. Eventually, Jean Louise mechanically passes around sandwiches and lets the various waves of conversation wash around her. Jean Louise realizes that she has nothing in common with these ladies, but if she marries Henry, they will form her social circle, and she’ll be out of place for the rest of her life.

The ladies at the Coffee begin discussing old Mr. Healy and Zeebo, and some express the rumor and fear that the black people are planning an underground revolution. The ladies seem to have their reactionary groups mixed up, since they are convinced that the members of the NAACP are also all Communists. Jean Louise finally snaps when one lady brings up “mongrelization,” pointing out that it takes two to mongrelize and that there’s no point in mistrusting one’s own race, let alone another.

Jean Louise contemplates what has happened to her family, and why everyone, in her perception, has become so deeply racist all of a sudden. She protests to herself that she learned about human decency while growing up in Maycomb, but now, the very people who taught her about such decency are no longer treating others with respect. Jean Louise is deeply conflicted because Calpurnia and Atticus have both instilled values of respect and equality for all in her, yet now, they are acting so differently.

Jean Louise pays attention to the Coffee again when one lady is discussing her recent visit to New York. Jean Louise explains that she knew she was a part of the city when someone pushed her on the subway and she pushed back. The ladies say that she must be blind not to see all the people of different races around her. Jean Louise thinks that she needs a watchman to sort through the hypocrisy surrounding her.

Summary: Chapter 14
After the Coffee, Jean Louise visits Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack keeps the house immaculate, save for the stacks of books piled everywhere. Uncle Jack serves salad to himself and Jean Louise. Jean Louise asks Uncle Jack what the matter is with Atticus, Henry, and Alexandra. When she tearfully says that she couldn’t stand to see Atticus and Henry sitting in that meeting, Uncle Jack bursts into laughter.

Uncle Jack explains to Jean Louise that Atticus isn’t a racist, but that he’s caught in local culture. Atticus is trying to preserve states’ rights and stop the federal government from intervening in local politics. Uncle Jack reminds Jean Louise that before the Civil War, the South was an agricultural society with deep-knit family ties, and that family feelings still ran very deep. To most of the South, the Civil War was less about the right to keep slaves and more about preserving identity. Uncle Jack says that now, the South is having a political philosophy forced upon it again. Jean Louise points out that he’s still dodging the issue of why race relations in town are worse than they’ve ever been. Uncle Jack can’t give her a straight answer. He tries to get Jean Louise to come to a conclusion about the whole thing, but she struggles to put it together.

ANALYSIS
Not only is Maycomb divided sharply by race, it is also divided by gender. The Coffee parallels the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council in that all the women in town gather together in the former setting, whereas all the men congregate in the latter. The Coffee represents a women’s world, a place where men cannot enter. The town has been traditionally divided into hierarchies and groups throughout its entire history, and to accept Maycomb society is to accept these divisions.

The Coffee makes Jean Louise deeply uncomfortable because she can’t be classified into any of the social roles that a Maycomb lady plays. She is not a young married lady, a new mother, a wistful single girl, or an experienced wife. Rather, Jean Louise is an individual and wants to be thought of as an individual. Much to Alexandra’s chagrin, Jean Louise doesn’t fit in, and she doesn’t want to fit in. The ladies in the Coffee seem naïve and backwards to Jean Louise. None of them stand out to her as individuals.

When Jean Louise was growing up, she was a tomboy, and her closest friends were boys. When she reached puberty and her teenage years, she was awkward and bookish. Then, she grew up and moved away. So Jean Louise never joined the female society of Maycomb in any significant way. Now, Jean Louise feels as though she has become a woman who does not fill any of the roles that a Maycomb lady should fill. Also, and more importantly, none of the other ladies at the Coffee express any interest in having opinions of their own. Instead, they rely on each others’ and their husbands’ advice, rather than thinking things through.

The Coffee represents another kind of hypocrisy in Maycomb. The women gather on their best behavior, yet they are able to speak so casually in such racist terms that Jean Louise is shocked. Jean Louise continues to feel betrayed. The same world that taught her decency and respect for humans now seems to be proclaiming the opposite views. Jean Louise refuses to play along and pretend that she accepts others’ beliefs out of the sake of politeness. Jean Louise feels like she has to be the town’s symbolic watchman. There isn’t any moral compass guiding the town, and Jean Louise feels like the only person who can see this.

Uncle Jack treats himself differently both physically and mentally from the bulk of Maycomb. Uncle Jack spends his days reading Victorian literature, which keeps him wrapped in his own bubble instead of immersed in Maycomb gossip. He also eats salads and other healthful foods instead of the heavy, traditional Southern fare, suggesting that he is more concerned about certain aspects of physical fitness than most people in town.

Uncle Jack doesn’t agree with the activities of the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council, but he has a much more diplomatic, measured response than Jean Louise does. Jean Louise reacts entirely through her emotions. When she sees Atticus and Henry at the meeting, her world appears to come crashing down around her. Jean Louise immediately feels deeply angry and frustrated at Atticus and Henry for what she perceives as deep betrayal. But Uncle Jack is far more practical and logical about the whole situation. To Uncle Jack’s eyes, Atticus and Henry aren’t racists, but pragmatists. Since they both have to get along with men in town, Atticus and Henry have to swallow their pride and show up at meetings and functions that they might not love for the sake of the community.

To Uncle Jack, Atticus’s attendance at the meeting reflects not racism but a desire to preserve the culture of the South in the face of meddlesome outsiders reaching in to change their practices. Atticus believes in the law, and he believes in states’ rights. Uncle Jack points out that just because Atticus went to the meeting, that doesn’t make him a racist or a hypocrite. Actually, attending the meeting makes him a person who wants to get along with and understand the leanings of the whole community. Uncle Jack’s explanation for Atticus’s behavior takes the rationalization of “Know thy enemy.” In other words, Atticus thinks that it’s better to understand how everyone around him thinks and feels and to try and compromise with their belief system, rather than lashing out all the time in violent protest. Even if Atticus doesn’t agree, it’s better to know what everybody else is thinking about and where they are than to be left in the dark.

Jean Louise isn’t convinced. To her, if Atticus really had the strong convictions that he’d taught her to have, he wouldn’t be caught dead at one of these racist gatherings. In Jean Louise’s perspective, Atticus’s presence at this meeting still represents the betrayal of everything he had taught her to believe. Although Jean Louise listens to Uncle Jack, she doesn’t mull his advice over and draw a conclusion from it. Instead, she mulishly stays in her own belief system, stubbornly insisting that Atticus has betrayed her, rather than thinking about any other reasons why Atticus might have acted in the way that he did.

Summary: Chapter 15
Jean Louise returns to the ice-cream parlor that is her childhood home. She has a flashback to when Jem and Henry were successful, glamorous high school seniors and she was an overweight, awkward, fourteen-year-old bookworm. Seniors traditionally invited their younger siblings to the Commencement Dance, and Jem convinced Henry to take Jean Louise as his date. Jean Louise picks out a new dress and buys false bosoms.

Jean Louise calls Atticus in a panic to teach her how to dance, and he sends over Uncle Jack, who gives her a crash course. When Henry arrives, he notices her new figure, but doesn’t say anything to her about it. They go to the dance, where the crowd is impressed with Jean Louise and her new dress.

During one dance, Henry suddenly pulls Jean Louise outside and points out that her “bosoms” are totally askew. She bursts into tears. Henry reassures her that it had just happened and that no one else had noticed. Henry flings the garments off into the distance and pulls her back inside, where no one seems to notice the change. Henry drops her off and kisses her goodnight. Jean Louise is smitten.

The next morning, Mr. Tuffett, the high school principal, calls a special assembly. Someone he says, has perpetrated an obscene act of defilement. He leads the whole school outside, where Jean Louise’s false bosoms are fluttering above a sign. Mr. Tuffett demands that the guilty party give him a signed statement that afternoon, or else he will expel the person who did it.

Henry is anxious at first, but he has an idea. Later that morning, Henry tells Jean Louise to write on a piece of paper, “Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine.” He says that she must give it to Mr. Tuffett just before noon. Jean Louise follows his orders, growing more and more nervous by the minute.

When she gives the note to Mr. Tuffett, he immediately throws it in the wastepaper basket. She is the hundred and fifth girl to give him the exact same note. Jean Louise asks Henry how he got the idea, and he says that Atticus put him up to it. Jean Louise returns from her flashback to the present day, in her childhood backyard.

Summary: Chapter 16
Jean Louise goes to Atticus’s office, where Henry greets her. Jean Louise tells Henry that she is not going to marry him. Jean Louise tells him that she was at the meeting yesterday and that seeing him there sickened her. Henry says that she shouldn’t be so rash, and that the group was more of a political organization than anything. Henry continues to explain that even though people like Atticus and himself might be mad on the inside, they can get more done by being diplomatic.

Jean Louise, Henry says, has more privilege than he does by virtue of being a Finch. Since Henry is not from such a highly regarded family, he has to work harder to fit in and get other people to respect him. Jean Louise protests that Henry is a coward and that he is pandering to what other people want him to do. Henry says that he has to be nice to the other people there so that he can lead a pleasant life. She calls him a hypocrite, and he says that he doesn’t have the luxury not to be a hypocrite. In the middle of their fight, Atticus arrives.

Summary: Chapter 17
Jean Louise and Atticus go into his office. Atticus tells Jean Louise not to be so hard on Henry. Atticus says that Uncle Jack had told him that Jean Louise was upset. She says that his involvement with the Citizens’ Council disgusts her. Atticus asks her what her initial reaction had been to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and she says that she had been furious. She doesn’t like the idea that the Court could ignore the Tenth Amendment, and that even though the Court was trying to do the right thing, it had done so in the wrong way. On the other hand, Jean Louise does believe that black people should have rights.

Atticus argues that it would be dangerous to give the local populations of black people the same rights that white people have, because they are not all fully responsible citizens. He says that Jefferson only wanted people to have the vote who had earned the privilege of full citizenship. He wants the NAACP to leave local affairs alone.

Jean Louise protest that Atticus had always taught her to treat everyone with equal justice, and that he had never claimed that one race was better than another. Jean Louise blames Atticus for teaching her to grow up with a sense of equity for all, rather than teaching her to be a dim-witted Southern belle. She asks, sarcastically, why he never taught her that Jesus only loved some races. Jean Louise says that she had looked up to Atticus, but that she never could again.

Atticus tells Jean Louise that they had only invited the racist man to speak as a form of defense. Jean Louise argues that Atticus is the biggest hypocrite of them all, because even though he treats black people politely, he denies that they’re human. She says that even if black people are childlike, they know that they’re being snubbed. Atticus retains his calm composure, but Jean Louise becomes increasingly hysterical.

ANALYSIS
While Jean Louise processes the emotional and psychological turmoil that recent events in Maycomb have caused her, she recalls events in her childhood that also stirred emotional and psychological anxiety. The awkwardness of adolescence and the disillusionment involved in transforming from a child into a woman seem particularly applicable to her current experience.

As Jean Louise transitions from being a girl into being a woman, Henry’s role changes in her life. When Jean Louise was a child, Henry was Jem’s friend, but now, as Jean Louise enters adolescence, she begins to have a different set of feelings towards him. The dance represents the first time that Henry and Jean Louise begin to realize that they might have potential to be a couple, not just Jem’s best friend and Jem’s little sister.

Transitioning into womanhood wasn’t easy for Jean Louise. She buys the fake bosoms out of nervousness. Jean Louise wants the bosoms to put into her dress so that she can feel less like a child who is going to the dance as Jem’s little sister, and more like a girl who is attractive and desirable in her own right. Jean Louise panics not only about her appearance but about what she will do at the dance itself. Here, Uncle Jack plays the role of secondary father, as he does throughout her life. Where Atticus provides a moral example and model for Jean Louise to depend upon, and Calpurnia provides the pragmatic, day-to-day care, Uncle Jack helps solve aesthetic crises.

As a child, Jean Louise was always a tomboy, not thinking twice about being different than the boys. Now, as she’s growing up, Jean Louise is becoming self-conscious about her body. Whether or not the fake breasts make Jean Louise look noticeably different, or if they primarily lift her confidence level, she is able to enjoy herself and attract positive attention at the dance. When then bosoms fall out, Jean Louise feels ashamed and embarrassed that Henry has seen, but her vulnerability makes Henry want to protect her, not laugh at her.

Although the movie Spartacus wasn’t released until 1960, after Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman, the scene in which every girl at school claims the false bosoms for her own is very reminiscent to the scene in Spartacus in which every slave claims to be Spartacus to protect the actual Spartacus’s identity. This scene is also reminiscent of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, which were very much in the political background as Harper Lee wrote this novel. During the nineteen-fifties, Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked members of the Communist Party, and so supporters and people in solidarity with the accused would declare that they were Communists as well.

All of the students rally together to support what they perceive of as injustice. As Jean Louise has seen in the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council meeting, the community has the capacity to come together in times of mutual hatred and distrust. However, Maycomb residents also have the ability to help each other in times of need. The town sticks together and helps out its own, which can be a bad thing when combined with bigotry, but it can also be a wonderful thing when combined with gallantry.

In the past, Henry and Atticus had always been there for Jean Louise and had protected her from the rest of the world. Jean Louise’s recollection of her adolescence demonstrates how she grew to perceive both of them as benevolent, rock-solid forces in her life.

In the incident of the false bosoms, Henry appears to be the one who saves the day. He has the brainwave about how he and Jean Louise can get out of trouble, and he convinces the rest of the girls in high school to claim the bosoms for their own. Henry orchestrates the whole incident so that the world remains safe for Jean Louise, and she can maintain both her innocence and her dignity. However, as it turns out, Atticus was the one who initially came up with the idea and sparked Henry’s plan. All along, Atticus ultimately is there to protect Jean Louise in every aspect of her life. Jean Louise knows that she can always rely on Atticus, no matter what, and this belief is continually reaffirmed throughout her girlhood and adolescence. Even as Henry begins to enter her life in a different role, Atticus is still her anchor.

The scene in which Atticus plants the seed for Henry to think of the idea that will help Jean Louise is reminiscent of the scene in which Uncle Jack tries to plant the seeds of an idea in Jean Louise’s head. Atticus is successful, since Henry picks up the brainwave. He comes up with and enacts the plot on his own, but Atticus is the one who sparked his imagination. In Jean Louise’s case, she hasn’t yet picked up the conclusion that Uncle Jack tries to get her to reach.

Jean Louise feels as though Henry and Atticus have failed her. She perceives them both as hypocrites. Jean Louise has a hard time seeing Henry after the incident with the meeting. But Atticus’s hypocrisy is even harder for Jean Louise to face than Henry’s. In her view, Atticus’s tacit acceptance of racism undermines every moral action he has taken and every value he has taught her throughout her life. But Atticus never says anything that is explicitly or blatantly racist. He doesn’t object specifically and vocally to the others’ opinions, but he also doesn’t ever claim that he agrees with them. Instead, he takes a very decidedly neutral stance.

Jean Louise’s outrage against Atticus attacks his perceived actions, more than his actual responses. While Jean Louise is enraged by Atticus’s presence at the meeting and his ability to condone the townsfolk’s behavior, she reacts mostly to what she thinks he believes and how she perceives him to be acting. Thus, Jean Louise is acting out more against her own emotions of betrayal and anger, rather than against any concrete action that Atticus has done or continues to do.

Summary: Chapter 18
Jean Louise drives home in a blinding rage and begins packing to leave. Alexandra comes in, asks if she’s had a fight with Atticus, and tells her that no Finch runs. Jean Louise explodes at Alexandra, and Alexandra begins to cry, which immediately makes Jean Louise feel guilty instead of angry.

As Jean Louise puts her car in the back of Atticus’s car, a taxi pulls up and deposits Uncle Jack, who tells her to listen to him. Jean Louise yells at him, and Uncle Jack smacks her hard across the mouth. When her head swings to the left, he smacks her again. Jean Louise staggers, blood ringing in her ears. She admits that she can’t fight Atticus and Henry anymore, but she can’t join them either.

Uncle Jack asks Alexandra for “missionary vanilla,” which is his code word for whiskey, and with a little prodding, she produces some. Uncle Jack pours some and makes Jean Louise drink it. Uncle Jack gets himself a drink as well.

Jean Louise asks Uncle Jack if he knows about the fight she had had with Atticus, and he says that he heard every word of it. After Jean Louise reflects for a few moments, she says that everything has still happened, but now, it feels bearable. Uncle Jack tells Jean Louise that every man’s watchman is his conscience. (Sound familiar again?)

Uncle Jack tells Jean Louise that she had been using Atticus’s conscience as her own and that she worshipped him too much. When Atticus was doing something that didn’t match with her own morals, it made her physically ill, and she felt like one of them had to kill the other to function as separate beings. Atticus let her yell at him because she had to regard him as a human, not as a god.

Uncle Jack says that Jean Louise is a little bit of a bigot because she stubbornly keeps her own opinions. When she disagrees with people, her instinct is to run away, not to stay and argue. Uncle Jack reminds Jean Louise that the most important thing to Atticus is, and will always be, the law. Uncle Jack asks Jean Louise for a match, which astounds her, since he had once yelled at her for smoking.

Uncle Jack says that Jean Louise is color blind. He says that the white supremacists love to trumpet the fear of mixed marriages, but in reality, it is perfectly normal for people to be color blind yet marry people of their own race.

Uncle Jack tells Jean Louise that it’s time for her to pick up her father. He asks her if she’s thought about moving back to Maycomb, and he says that the town needs more people like her. There are more like-minded people in Maycomb than she might believe, Uncle Jack says. Uncle Jack says that she’ll have to let Henry down easy: after all, he says, it’s fine for people to love who they will, but you should marry your own kind.

When Jean Louise asks Uncle Jack why he’s being so patient with her, Uncle Jack confesses that he had been in love with her mother. Jean Louise feels deeply ashamed, but Uncle Jack reassures her that all is forgiven.

Summary: Chapter 19
At Atticus’s office, Jean Louise makes a date with Henry for that evening. Atticus comes out to meet her. When Jean Louise begins to apologize, Atticus says that he’s proud of her. Jean Louise realizes that they need each other to balance each other out. Atticus gets in the front seat of the car, and for the first time since she’s been in Maycomb, Jean Louise takes care not to bump her head as she gets into the car to drive home.

ANALYSIS
Jean Louise’s reaction to her confrontation with Atticus is to run away from her family and Maycomb. She thinks that if she leaves Maycomb behind physically, she can also leave it behind emotionally. However, her intense rage as well as her guilt when Alexandra cries suggest strongly that Jean Louise still carries Maycomb and her family deeply within her heart. Jean Louise thinks that the only response to hypocrisy is to disavow it and leave it all behind. Alexandra, however, argues that Jean Louise shouldn’t run away from her problems, but instead must face them, since that is her family’s legacy.

Uncle Jack justifies hitting Jean Louise by claiming that he’s trying to slap some sense into her. And when Uncle Jack slaps Jean Louise, she is shaken both physically and emotionally. Both the slap itself and the fact that Uncle Jack was so powerfully moved that he hit her shock Jean Louise, and this outburst of emotion convinces her that she cannot leave Maycomb. Uncle Jack helps Jean Louise to forgive Atticus for being human, not a god. He also convinces her to forgive herself and not think that she’s been a fool all these years to worship Atticus. Jean Louise realizes that everyone has faults, and everyone makes decisions that might seem questionable, but we all have to live with these mistakes and choices, not run away from them.

Alexandra’s secrecy around alcohol is representative of many codes of Southern decorum that help to define life in Maycomb. Alcohol goes by many euphemisms, “missionary vanilla” being one of them, so that people don’t have to admit to having something unseemly in the house. Maintaining genteel manners and a decorous front are primary components of life in Maycomb. Keeping up appearances is not necessarily a bad quality, but Jean Louise cannot tolerate when putting on a good face becomes a way to conceal hypocrisy lurking just below the surface.

Go Set a Watchman is about growing up and knowing how to trust your own opinions instead of relying on what others’ tell you. And part of trusting yourself is knowing how to admit when you’ve made a mistake or are being mulish and pigheaded for no good reason. According to Uncle Jack’s somewhat convoluted but somewhat plausible reasoning, Atticus was testing Jean Louise to see if she had developed her own moral compass that ticked despite what others did in her surroundings. Jean Louise trusts Uncle Jack’s opinions and advice as much as she used to trust Atticus, and someday will probably trust Atticus again. As it turns out, Uncle Jack was also in love with Jean Louise’s mother, which, perhaps somewhat oddly, reinforces his role as a second father figure in Jean Louise’s life.

In the final scene, Jean Louise’s not bumping her head on the car door is symbolic in several ways. Ever since she arrived in Maycomb, she’s been bumping her head on the car door. Jean Louise feels like she doesn’t fit in anymore, even though she grew up in the town. And the more that she found out about her father and Henry’s involvement with the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council, and the more that Alexandra and the women at the Coffee talked so comfortably in such racist terms, Jean Louise felt increasingly out of place. Jean Louise feels conspicuous and out of place. However, by the end of the novel, Jean Louise begins to realize that even though she may not hold the same opinions as many people in Maycomb, this community is still her home.

Not bumping her head on the car door also symbolizes Jean Louise’s desire to try and integrate herself into the community instead of fighting it tooth and nail. Jean Louise sees herself as someone who doesn’t fit in. She wears slacks instead of a dress and gloves. At the Coffee, she drifts around the various social cliques, feeling as though she’s not part of any one of them. But trying to get into the car carefully shows a new awareness of Jean Louise’s part of her surroundings. Instead of getting her environment to adapt to her, Jean Louise shows that she is at least willing to try to meet those around her halfway.

Ultimately, in Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise learns that sometimes you need to become disillusioned and see your childhood world crumble in order to grow up and embrace adulthood. Jean Louise also learns that running away from home isn’t a permanent solution. Although she needed to leave Maycomb in order to find her own voice and discover her independent self, she now has to return to Maycomb to give that voice the platform and purpose it has earned for itself. Jean Louise discovers that sometimes, the most courageous act of all is to accept and embrace people despite their flaws. She also realizes that she can’t rely on anyone else to be her conscience and guide her through life. Jean Louise must be her own watchman and can only rely on herself to navigate through the world, but she also has to be strong enough to stand firm in her values and help other people by being their watchman as well.

The Pervasiveness of Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy and perceived bigotry form the central emotional crux of Go Set a Watchman. The main hypocrisy that is at the center of the novel is the one that Jean Louise perceives from Atticus. Jean Louise enters the novel with the firm belief that Atticus can do no wrong, ethically and morally speaking. He taught her to treat all people equally and with great respect. However, when Atticus attends the meeting of Maycomb’s white supremacists without actively protesting, Jean Louise feels as though the bottom has dropped out from underneath her.

When Jean Louise perceives Atticus’s hypocrisy, she begins to believe that there is no one in the world whom she can trust. Alexandra also seems like a hypocrite to Jean Louise because she is willing to accept Maycomb’s racism and does not chastise Atticus for attending the white supremacist meeting. Henry is a hypocrite because he attends the meeting for his own political gain, wiling to accept others’ bigotry just so that he doesn’t get singled out and lambasted for seeming antagonistic. The ladies at the Coffee just seem like uninformed bigots to Jean Louis: instead of thinking for themselves and acting on their own accord, they are perfectly willing to accept the rumors that their husbands and their friend promote.

The Depth of Family Ties
Even though Jean Louise resists life in Maycomb and feels betrayed by Atticus, she is continuously pulled back to her childhood home because of her love for her family. Jean Louise fights with Atticus and accuses him of deceiving her throughout her entire childhood. In Jean Louise’s perception, Atticus taught her by his own example that she should always be on the side of justice and should promote equality without ever tolerating intolerance. When she sees Atticus acting in direct opposition to these precepts, her impulse is to flee. But Uncle Jack convinces Jean Louise that she herself would be a hypocrite if she turned her back on things she disagrees with instead of facing them and arguing for her own beliefs. If Jean Louise left Atticus and the rest of Maycomb, she would be the bigot. But if she stays and explains her beliefs, she will be following Atticus’s true teachings. Instead of setting himself up as her primary moral example, Atticus teaches Jean Louise how to become her own conscience and her own guide.

She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all.
This quotation comes from the first chapter, when the reader first learns about Jean Louise’s relationship with Henry Clinton. Jean Louise and Henry have an on-again-off-again thing going on. Whenever Jean Louise comes home to visit Maycomb, she and Henry date each other seriously for those few weeks, but when Jean Louise is in New York, they don’t appear to stay in touch very regularly. Jean Louise feels comfortable in a state of transition and flux with Henry. When she hasn’t pinned down her emotions precisely, she can live in both states at once, and she doesn’t have to make an irrevocable decision that will sway her life decisively in one direction or the other. Jean Louise’s self-imposed ideas about love don’t really come from any experience, or from any real guidance. Even though Jean Louise spends much of the novel in spaces of transition, she still maintains the perception that love must be a black-and-white (no pun intended) binary.

Jean Louise’s relationship with Henry mirrors her ambivalence towards Maycomb. Whenever Jean Louise returns back home to Maycomb, she remembers why she feels so at home in this place. Even though she might not agree with everything politically and philosophically, Jean Louise’s whole family is rooted in Maycomb and the surrounding area, and she feels ties to the community that extend farther and deeper than her own lifetime. But Jean Louise also feels like an outsider in Maycomb. Her views don’t fit into what the community primarily believes, and she doesn’t fill any conventional role. And even though she argues against the conventional wisdom about love, she recognizes that ultimately, she can only maintain a halfway relationship with both Henry and Maycomb for a finite length of time. Either she will have to commit to marry Henry and settle in Maycomb, or she will have to reject Henry. Rejecting Henry doesn’t necessarily mean that she can’t live in Maycomb, but since the two are very intertwined, it’s sometimes difficult for her to perceive a future in Maycomb in which she is not married to Henry.

2.The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, “He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman,” had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.
This quotation comes at the end of Chapter 8, after Jean Louise has seen Atticus and Henry in the meeting of the Maycomb County Citizens’ Council. In this scene, Jean Louise sneaks up to the Colored balcony of the courthouse to watch the meeting. This balcony is exactly where Jean Louise sat as a child to watch Atticus litigate to defend the one-armed black man accused of rape. In that scenario, Atticus publicly and shamelessly filled Jean Louise with pride. Now, just a few years later, Jean Louise feels as though Atticus’s actions completely undermine everything that he had taught her.

This quotation also demonstrates Jean Louise’s propensity for heightening the drama and implication of events in her life. The three adverbs—“publicly, grossly, and shamelessly”––that modify her emotion emphasize her abundant, irrational, emotional response. Jean Louise lets her flood of feelings wash over her and consume her entirely. She is not able to take things in stride, or to speculate about any of the rationale behind Atticus’s presence at the organization. Instead, she assumes the worst and plunges into the depths of despair.

Even though Jean Louise sees both Atticus and Henry at the meeting, Henry’s presence doesn’t evoke the same intense, sickened reaction that she has regarding Atticus. Although Atticus and Henry have essentially committed the same action, Jean Louise’s core-shaking anger is only focused towards her father. The fact that Jean Louise focuses solely on Atticus and doesn’t even think of Henry suggests that she is not in love with him, or that he is not as profoundly embedded in her own identity as Atticus is. Jean Louise has internalized Atticus’s influence on her and has turned him into a paragon of morality, so when Atticus the human proves to be imperfect, Jean Louise’s internal conception of Atticus also crumbles, since she has not learned to separate them consciously.

3. What stood behind her, the most potent moral force in her life, was the love of her father. She never questioned it, never thought about it, never even realized that before she made any decision of importance the reflex, “What would Atticus do?” passed through her unconscious… she did not know that she worshiped him.
This quotation occurs in Chapter 9, after Jean Louise has seen Atticus and Henry in the white supremacist meeting. Jean Louise reflects on her perception of Atticus and how that has impacted the way she leads her life. For many people in Maycomb, religion is a reflex, as they believe in God unquestioningly and subconsciously. For Jean Louise, Atticus fills the role that God fills in others’ belief systems. The phrase “What would Atticus do?” gently riffs on the common Christian dictum “What would Jesus do?” This phrase was popularized in 1896 by Charles Sheldon in his popular book In His Steps, subtitled “What Would Jesus Do?” Sheldon’s book promotes the Protestant idea that good works and following in the example of Christ are critical components to living a full, successful, devout life. Jean Louise’s substitution of Atticus for Jesus highlights the centrality of Atticus in Jean Louise’s moral and spiritual life.

The idea of Atticus forms an almost spiritual bedrock underpinning how Jean Louise perceives the world. Jean Louise has always prided herself on her independence and her ability to make individual decisions, but in reality, she has always made her decisions by checking in with a higher power. The internal Atticus in Jean Louise’s imagination is not the same as the real Atticus. Rather, Jean Louise has internalized what Atticus taught her growing up, and now, she uses the imagined voice and judgment of Atticus to help her make moral and ethical decisions. But Jean Louise has conflated her own internal Atticus with the real-life Atticus. She doesn’t realize that when she’s asking herself, “What would Atticus do?” she’s really checking in with her own moral compass. Atticus didn’t teach Jean Louise how to imitate him exactly. Instead, he taught her how to make her own decisions and be honest with herself.

4.Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.
This quotation is from chapter 18, near the end of the novel, when Uncle Jack is explaining to Jean Louise why she must not run away from Maycomb and why she must instead stand up for what she believes to be ethically important. The “watchman” comes from Isaiah 21:6, which reads, “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” This text from Isaiah formed the center of sermon that Jean Louise attends with her family earlier in the novel. The idea of the “watchman” is that of a person who can maintain strong moral guidance even among a sea of intolerance. The watchman serves as a beacon of truth and strength in the midst of rumors and hypocrisies. Jean Louise had always perceived Atticus as her watchman, and when he acts in a way that she thinks a watchman should not act, she feels aimless. But Uncle Jack reminds Jean Louise that relying on anyone to be one’s personal watchman will never provide a lasting way to approach the world.

The phrase “every man’s island” recalls the seventeenth century poet John Donne, who famously wrote, “No man is an island.” Donne emphasizes the connection between all human beings and criticizes the false perception than any one person can exist solely by himself or herself. People need connections and the help of others to live. Uncle Jack adapts Donne’s sentiment for his own purposes. According to Uncle Jack, humans need each other to live, but no one human can provide another’s internal moral compass. People need help, but others can only guide individuals to a certain extent. Although people can help each other, each person must have his or her own conscience, since relying on others to make ethical decisions will never ultimately be sufficient.

5. That’s the one thing about here, the South, you’ve missed. You’d be amazed if you knew how many people are on your side, if side’s the right word. You’re no special case. The woods are full of people like you, but we need some more of you.
This quotation is from Chapter 18, when Uncle Jack is lecturing Jean Louise for lashing out against Atticus. Uncle Jack explains to Jean Louise that she might try giving people in Maycomb more credit. Jean Louise feels like everyone in the South is racist, unable to look past his or her prejudices. Jean Louise has a tendency to dramatize the world into all-or-nothing scenarios, and she has trouble seeing shades of gray, so when somebody says or does something that hints at racist tendencies, she immediately labels that person as a bigot. But Uncle Jack reminds Jean Louise that even though she feels like she’s completely on her own against the group, she’s not actually alone in her beliefs. After all, Jean Louise’s beliefs didn’t arise out of nowhere. If she let herself listen to others, Uncle Jack suggests, she might be surprised to learn how many people have similar opinions.

Uncle Jack’s reference to “the woods” has many layers of symbolism. Uncle Jack literally refers, on one level, to the actual woods. Maycomb County is a rural area, and many country people who live in the woods seem as though they hold backward, old-fashioned views about the world. However, Uncle Jack points out that one of the reasons that many people might be afraid to share their true opinions is that they lack the language to do so or a spokesperson to lead the way. Jean Louise, he suggests, can serve as the town’s watchman to help them see what they already know to be right. The woods also frequently appear in Shakespeare as places of danger, magic, or both. The idea that the woods might be full of people like Jean Louise represents a romantic notion of the South as a land full of potential wonder. The woods suggest both an idyllic past and an unknown future.