Abstract
By presenting a very human portrait of a flawed Atticus in Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee has destabilized the view many of these people have of the heroically decent protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird. In so doing, Lee has clouded, if not destroyed, the very terra firma of inspiration upon which their lives have been constructed. The enormity of commentary and criticism surrounding the character of Atticus that has emerged since the publication of Lee’s second novel, which portrays his adult daughter’s homecoming as her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, faces desegregation in the 1950s, lays naked the distinction between what it is to view the world as an adult—with an acknowledgement of the hues of grey that mark our remembrances of things past—and what it means to regard the world as a child, when memory and vision are unclouded and pristine.