Hypocrisy: A Comparison

723 Words3 Pages
Harper Lee’s highly regarded novel To Kill a Mockingbird tells a sincere tale focusing on the evils of racism. This cherished story, set in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression, is narrated through the innocently unrestrained mind of a young yet capable girl named Scout Finch. Similarly, Go Set a Watchman, a greatly awaited novel also written by Lee, is recounted through Scout’s, now known as Jean Louise, refined perspective. Jean Louise returns to Maycomb after twenty years and perceives events differently as a matured woman. While I would characterize Lee’s later style in To Kill a Mockingbird as candid and ingenuous, Go Set a Watchman enhances the reader’s understanding of the American South by revealing the…show more content…
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee creates the Missionary Tea scene, exhibiting the blatant hypocrisy of the supposedly pious ladies that are members of the missionary circle. While attending the gathering and idly listening to fragments of conversation, Scout thinks, “Ladies… filled me with… a firm desire to be elsewhere” (7). In the text, the ladies at the assembly are gossiping, and even though Scout is unable to understand as a child, she is instinctive as well as insightful enough to know that there is something in particular she dislikes about these rendezvousing women. The reader comprehends that Scout is disapproving of the ladies’ distasteful hypocrisy during their session, but since To Kill a Mockingbird is written in a child’s point of view, Lee only hints at Scout’s thoughts. Much like the Missionary Tea scene, there is a coffee gathering arranged for Jean Louise’s visit to Maycomb in Lee’s other novel Go Set a Watchman. However, Scout is more frank when it comes to her opinions of these ladies at the coffee get-together, which is shown after she listens to the chief matters of their perpetual discussions. She reflects, “They talk incessantly” (5). She also muses, “You are fascinated with yourself” (7). Through Jean Louise, Lee is unmistakably indicating that these women are narcissistic as well as unconcerned when it comes to helping others in the…show more content…
During the Missionary Tea scene, Scout says, “Today… [the] missionary circle [was] fighting the good fight” (2). Lee alludes to verses in 1 and 2 Timothy, and the reader can recognize the irony of this statement because the missionary circle was not righteous. What they preached contradicted how they honestly lived. For example, Mrs. Merriweather lectured the other members of the missionary circle about the disgraceful, yet necessitous lives of the Mrunas in Africa, and she seemed to show empathy, yet she failed to see how much Tom Robinson, an obviously innocent black man accused of rape, was struggling in her own town. On the other hand, throughout the coffee meeting in Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise is contemplating how the people of Maycomb still have defective morals and have not changed whatsoever in her absence. Jean Louise suggests, “I need a watchman to lead… and declare what he seeth” (8). The author is referring to a verse in the book of Isaiah and emphasizes that the town is in dire need of a moral overseer since no one seems to be virtuous enough to observe their own immorality and self-regard and then change for the better. Alas, Jean Louise returned to the same unconscious Maycomb she spent her childhood in. Lee’s allusions elucidate her opinion of the South’s misconceptions and
Open Document