Harper Lee's new book reveals a racist Atticus Finch

July 11, 2015 15:19

We remember Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's 1960 classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, as that novel's moral conscience: kind, wise, honourable, an avatar of integrity who used his gifts as a lawyer to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town filled with prejudice and hatred in the 1930s.

As indelibly played by Gregory Peck in the 1962 movie, he was the perfect man -- the ideal father and a principled idealist, an enlightened, almost saintly believer in justice and fairness.

In real life, people named their children after Atticus. People went to law school and became lawyers because of Atticus.

Shockingly, in Lee's long-awaited novel, Go Set a Watchman (due out Tuesday), Atticus is a racist who once attended a Klan meeting, who says things like "The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people". Or asks his daughter: "Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?"

Click HERE to read the New York Times' exclusive review Of Harper Lee's new book

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