Reading the Character of Atticus Finch in "Go Set a Watchman"

Allen Mendenhall, Auburn University, has published Children Once, Not Forever: Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman and Growing Up in volume 91 of the Indiana Law Journal Supplement (2015). Here is the abstract.

This is the first law review article to analyze Harper Lee's novel Go Set a Watchman and in particular its portrayal of the famed attorney Atticus Finch. This article argues that the latest, controversial depiction of Atticus Finch is not a sharp departure from the depiction of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The notion that Go Set a Watchman presents a new or different Atticus Finch is predicated on ahistorical assumptions and a willful misreading of the ominous, violent, and dangerous world of the fictional, yet eminently recognizable, Maycomb, Alabama.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.