[ SECRET POST #3365 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3365 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 070 secrets from Secret Submission Post #481.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[skeletal_history]

I want to shake everyone's shoulders and yell, "ATTICUS IS.NOT A REAL PERSON. THIS BOOK IS NOT A REVELATION OF A REAL PERSON'S SECRET PAST AS A HORRIBLE RACIST ASSHOLE BEFORE HE SAW THE LIGHT AND BECAME THE GOOD MAN YOU ADMIRE. DON'T WORRY: YOU HAVE NOT BEEN DECEIVED OR BETRAYED, AND YOUR FAVE IS NOT PROBLEMATIC!!!"

Because fuck.

[(Anonymous)]

Uhhhh, you're missing the whole point. If he WAS a real person it would be a lot easier to take, because real people are different from fictional people, you can't control them, they're one single human being who just happens to exist in the world. A real human being does not embody a symbol or a message or an idea. But Atticus is not a real person, he's a fictional person - a longstanding symbol and role-model and archetype. He's stand-in for a set of admirable qualities, he's the best an upper-middle class white guy in the '30s American south could have possibly realistically managed to be. He's a lesson in How To Not Be Prejudiced When Everyone Around You Is Prejudiced.

It's a huge slap in the face to have a hopeful story illustrating that human beings are capable of being good and and brave and rejecting the prejudice all around them (not 100% perfectly, he's still got some classist and sexist and racist assumptions even in TKAM, but still VERY impressively) and pass these lessons on unforgettably to their children, thereby spreading a drop of hope for increased respect and fairness throughout society and into the future, even when mired in an environment choking in layers of overt and covert racism and veiled, lurking, simmering racist violence.

And for that matter, Atticus was WAY more complex, nuanced, and layered in TKAM than in GSAW. The fact that he was more dickish in GSAW did not magically make him more realistic or believable or complex just by virtue of added dickishness - the book was poorly written and characterized, and therefore made him LESS complex, realistic, and layered.

[(Anonymous)]

sa

Whoops I meant "It's a huge slap in the face to have a hopeful story...[etc]...be ripped away and crapped on."

[skeletal_history]

Well, Lee originally envisioned Scout's father as one personality, and then by the time she wrote Mockingbird, the character of Scout's father had transformed into the personality of the Atticus Finch we know and love. That's it, that's what happened.

If people draw a throughline between the two characters, as though he were a real man with a real self which Watchman exposed in all its ugliness, and take this as a slap in the face, then...well, that's a misunderstanding of what a novel is and how it's crafted. It's more fruitful to investigate how and why Lee's characterization of Atticus changed from common bigot to icon of nobility and principle, than to get all het up thinking Atticus was not "actually" the man we were led to believe he was.

I'm not saying you're doing this -- this is just what I saw and heard happening often when the book came out.

[tree_and_leaf]

In fact, even if you know nothing about the circumstances of the two books' composition, you can tell that things have changed, because in "GSAW", Tom is acquitted. In fannish terms, they're AUs of each other.