ABSTRACT

Many contemporary readers shared Scout Finch's sense of disillusionment as they read Go Set a Watchman and learned of Atticus's racist beliefs. Many of Scout's tomboy predecessors display a heightened capacity to develop relationships with other marginalized individuals. Scout's example instructs other characters and, by extension, Lee's Civil Rights era readers, about how to respond to marginalized individuals within their own communities. Scout, by contrast, serves as a historical actor at various moments in the novel, particularly when she intervenes in the racist violence within her community. The failures and paradoxes of sympathy in To Kill a Mockingbird seem only to intensify by the novel's conclusion. Atticus Finch has certainly been lauded for his commitment to Civil Rights, but his blind spots, many of which are the product of his historical era, nevertheless contribute to the limitations of To Kill a Mockingbird as a work of social criticism.