The Indigenous Political Essence of Art and Literature by WF Pray
The banner title to this section should raise one question: how is art political? In turn, this issue should raise two preliminary and underlying questions: What is politics and what is art, and how do the two interact.
According to
Aristotle, politics is the process that determines who gets what, how much of
it do they get, and when do they get it. For Picasso “art is a lie that makes
us realize truth.” The political
essence of art is speaking truth to power. It is this essential interaction
between power and truth that lies at the heart of this section of study
literature and politics.
The following quote from a former high profile political leader will come as no surprise.
“Literature
and art are part of the whole people’s struggle for Communism . . . The highest
social destiny of art and literature is to mobilize the people to the struggle
for new advances in the building of Communism.”
Nikita
Khrushchev, “For a Close Link Between Literature and Art and the Life of the
People,” Kommunist Magazine, #12, Moscow, 1957
Whether the
above sentiment of social destiny is actually realized through communism is
beside the point of recognizing that the truth of art can and should be
enlisted in the struggle for political goals.
We all enjoy
fiction and devour it with little thought that such a feast might be
influencing our thinking regarding the social order in which we live. So, in
reading the above quote from the last leader of a Stalinist USSR---and indeed
the last Russian leader who was an actual participant in the Bolshevik
revolution---we might be quick to dismiss it as self-serving propaganda. However,
such an easy dismissal will not be the position taken by this contributor of The
Firebird Rising publishing house. This section of our site will be devoted
to the approach that all art is political---and not just the communist
variety---and thus the critical reviews in subsequent “essence of art and
literature” essays will adhere to the analysis of literature as essentially
political. To quote the US historian, Erik Barnouw:
“To me entertainment is a poisonous
concept. The idea of entertainment is that it has nothing to do with the
serious problems of the world but that it fills up an idle hour. Actually,
there is an ideology implicit in every kind of fictional story. Fiction may be
far more important than non-fiction in forming people’s opinions.”
Erik
Barnouw, “Television As A Medium,” Feedback #1, The Network Project, Performance
#3 (July/August 1972)
We recognize
that this is an unfamiliar approach to fiction, so our base effort will be to outline
what we mean by ideology and politics in literature? Then first, what we do not
mean by “political” is party doctrine, partisan hacking or quixotic
proselytizing. What we do mean by “political” in literature is the
examination and analysis of underlying (and quite possibly, unconscious) ideological
eddies and propensities existing in all fiction that serve to encourage us to
form political opinions based on truth. Before delving into the first effort,
it is appropriate to define our subject, politics, and what to look for
in a search for the ideologies of the “Left” and the “Right” that are to be
found in the fiction we read. What will we be looking for?
Ideological
tripwires found in fiction can be sorted into three broad categories. By the
very nature of the subject, one or all these categories will, with few
exceptions, be present in all fiction. The subtleties and nuances of these
categories will remain in the hands of the writers we have selected to study
individual pieces of fiction. For right
now, though, those three general categories are:
(1) A writer’s
attitude toward human nature and equality; how do you feel about the
characters in the book: Hopeful or despondent – are the main characters
uplifting or mean-spirited and despairing – are they generous and helpful, or flawed
and uncaring? All these have serious implications
for the Left, that typically sees human nature in a positive light, and for a
Right that typically see human nature as corrupted by selfishness and egoism (not
to mention, original sin.)
(2) The writer’s attitude toward the existing social order (typically socio-economic distinctions, i.e., class): Are social distinctions evaluated critically or presented as inevitably produced by forces beyond human control? When friction develops between the fictional characters and a restrictive and hostile social environment, are the actors justified in seeking change, or resigned to their fate. Progressive and conservative world views on an existing social order are obviously in play here.
(2) The writer’s attitude toward the existing social order (typically socio-economic distinctions, i.e., class): Are social distinctions evaluated critically or presented as inevitably produced by forces beyond human control? When friction develops between the fictional characters and a restrictive and hostile social environment, are the actors justified in seeking change, or resigned to their fate. Progressive and conservative world views on an existing social order are obviously in play here.
(3) The
attitude toward the conflict between progress and tradition, that is change
-vs- customaries frequently emerge in literature. Related to #2 above, the
question becomes: Is the world as it should be, supported by traditional values
(a condition of the Right) or are there reasons to change things and remake the
world (a vision of the Left?) It would seem apparent to most that conservatives
tend to accept traditional values and rebuff progressive changes; the left opts
for the reverse.[1] Much conflict in literature can be reduce to
elements of a hostile status quo being confronted with a dynamic need for change.
Of course, such a confrontation takes many forms.
Because the
above sounds more like political science than it does literature – and indeed,
the main contributor does hold an advanced degree in political science – we
have insisted that future contributors make very clear in their analysis the
political nature of the elements found within each book or piece of art
reviewed. Additionally, these books may be current best sellers such as James
Patterson, or past standards, even going back to James Fennimore Cooper. In
other words, nothing is out of bounds for these reviewers.
What is
clear here is that the literary value and structure of a piece is not evaluated.
The focus will be on the impact of a piece of fiction on politics and social
change, on speaking truth to power.
[1] It is true that conservatives offer critical evaluations
of current events and institutions, but as a general rule the evaluation is
rooted in past conditions and remedies, and presses for a return to past
conditions and past social principles (i.e. the very definition of
reactionary.) We might offer as a clear example of reactionary thinking: the long-running
battle to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, (New York, NY, 1960) reviewed by WF Pray
For those readers in need of a refresher for To Kill a Mockingbird, follow the link to a Sparks Notebook Study Guide: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/mocking/summary/
Harper Lee is a most complicated author. Understanding her and the politics of her two best known public works presented a unique problem. Those books, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Go Set a Watchman are vastly different books. This has been commented on many times, but from a literary and biographical standpoint. Here, we are going to investigate Watchman and Mockingbird as being quite different politically, very nearly to the point of being politically opposite. Rather than take a contrast and compare position throughout a single article, we will investigate the books both individually and hermetically, allowing the reader to independently arrive more easily at a comparative analysis.
Mockingbird is by far the easier of the two books to explore politically, and the one we will discuss here. The hero Atticus Finch is a lawyer in Maycomb, a sleepy Alabama town peopled with a wide range of colorful characters. Atticus is the man Lee sets up to defend a Negro (Tom Robinson) accused of raping a white woman. This scenario is of deliberate design, intended it would seem to offer its weight to the side of a growing, progressive movement in the America of the 1960s. But before dismissing Mockingbird as merely a progressive, formula slam-dunk, we need to look throughout the work to highlight episodes that will contrast sharply with a read of Watchman.
First should be noted that Lee intends for Maycomb to be more than a dot pinned to a map of the Deep South. It should be clear that Lee intends for Maycomb, this sleepy Southern town, to represent a bigger picture: The American social world of the nineteen-fifties writ large. The daughter of Atticus Finch, Jean Louise (aka Scout) states several times that Maycomb, not New York, is her real world. This devise of universality alone sets the book up as underwriting a broader social and philosophical picture than would otherwise be the case.
At numerous points in the book, Lee states without equivocation that racial thinking is abnormal, referring to racism as a thing which drives people mad. As the trial of Tom Robinson approaches, Atticus expresses the hope that his children can survive the trial “without catching Maycomb’s usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand . . .” (p. 117.) Here in identifying racism as a disease, Lee intends for the reader to understand that racism is not a natural part of the human spiritual genome. “Maycomb’s usual disease,” as Lee wants you to see it, is an environmental, even cultural affliction that erupts in the human condition as a malignant disease and does not emerge from the well-spring of human nature.
Lee also makes clear that the dichotomy or contradiction, between the environment and human nature is both a feature of racism and a provoker of the violence it spawns There is a point in the story when the towns’ people in a mob, prepare to seize Tom and are stopped by Attius and his young daughter Scout. Later, when explaining this success Atticus proclaims “A mob’s always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham [as a spokesperson for the town] was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. . . That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. . . .” (P. 210.) Again according to Lee, human nature is basically a profound force for good and can always muster the gumption to trump moral turpitude.
There is a point in Mockingbird when the reader encounters one Dolphus Raymond, a local reprobate and ne’er-do-well, who is challenged by Scout: Why does he live like he does, pretending to be an unwashed drunkard? Into the mouth of this unlikely, low-life character, Lee puts some especially important words. Dolphus lives this life; he informs Scout and Dill, because he wants to be left alone. Scout is puzzled. Why tell her and her childhood friend, Dill, this dark secret? Dolphus explains: “Because you’re children and you can understand it.” Then further, this apparent degenerate, representing the dregs of Maycomb’s (i.e., the world’s) social order, offers an important and valuable insight. Dolphus reveals that the positive moral value of the human spirit gets hammered by the world until its innocence is demolished and evil accepted as a normal condition of life.
Commenting on Dill’s (Scout’s side-kick throughout the story) upset and his crying about the way people treat each other, especially the way white people treat black people, Dolphus explains: “Things haven’t caught up with that one’s [i.e. Dill] instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won’t get sick and cry. Maybe things’ll strike him as being – not quite right, say, but he won’t cry, not when he gets a few years on him. . . . Cry about the simple hell people give other people —without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people too” (p. 269.) A keyword in this diagnosis is instinct. Dolphus reveals to all who will listen, that a child’s instinct is the opposite of racial animas; the child’s instinct naturally leans toward balance and fairness. That the natural bent of human instinct is toward justice and rectitude, and is only corrupted by the evil accumulated by history and sown into the fabric of society.
It is no mistake that Lee puts these most profound words – especially in the context of the 1950s – into the mouth of the town’s unflappable low-life, a man who had sired children of mixed race and shuns “polite,” Southern society – a man who stands outside the social order. Writers do not make mistakes in this regard. It is quite deliberate that from the underbelly of the town comes the forceful claim that innocent children are twisted into cynical adults by witnessing and swallowing whole the world’s suffering and pain. And who would know better than the charlatan bum, the flip side of “decent” society, Dolphus Raymond.
While there are many more examples of progressive sentiments in Mockingbird, and no noticeable contravening, so let us close with a commanding statement ultra-revealing of the progressive perspective that defines this book. Toward the end of Mockingbird, Scout nails it. In a debate with her brother (Jem) concerning a local boy, Walter, who is illiterate because his father keeps him out of school to work the farm. Scout says to Jem: “Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowin.' That Walter’s as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothing’s wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” (p. 304) Here, Lee clearly puts the onus for key human failings on social and environmental factors. Not only that, for good measure Lee affirms the equality of people. In fact, it is tempting to read this statement as a rejection of race itself, viz., “There’s only one kind of race. The human race.”
From even a casual perusal of Mockingbird, as we have done, the progressive sentiments expressed by Harper Lee are abundant. Faith in the underlying goodness of human nature, the rejection of ignorance and injustice, the rejection of evil as endemic to society, all speak loudly to the legs driving all progressive philosophy. Mockingbird is a classic of forward-looking literature, a book richly deserving of acclaim, especially give the time it was written, when such art flew in the face of convention and offered moral sustenance and support to progressive dreamers and warriors.
It is vital to keep these progressive points in mind as we explore Lee’s other work, Go Set a Watchman, a book of a quite different orientation. The next essay, one that will analyze Watchman in much the same way as we have explored Mockingbird, will reveal not only a different philosophy, but a sharply contrasting Harper Lee herself. Following that analysis of Watchman, we will conclude with some speculation as to why the two disparate Lees and the two remarkably different viewpoints on race and human nature are to be found in the two different books.
Can we read Go Set a Watchman as an embryonic civil rights bombshell---a politically confused prequel to the more mature and sophisticated To Kill a Mockingbird – a book that stands as a solid testament to changing racial conditions in the South? Overall, this is the accepted chronology, and one that make sense given the different styles of the two different books.
Go Set a Watchman, can be read as a series of vignettes, a jumble of barely aligned sentiments in need of some serious editing – which in the end is exactly what happened. There are numerous reviews that explain Mockingbird as a cooperative effort between agents, editors and Lee.[1] While not all of these brief snapshots are openly politically biased, several of these sketches insist on serious analysis of their political content. The demand for analysis is driven partly by the odd and left-handed manner in which Lee declares her tilt toward liberalism using contrived literary signals. In the end, these signaling devices used in Watchman are of much greater significance than the author’s writing timetable. Watchman uses literary contrivances that speak to political undercurrents, but these contrivances were later dropped in Mockingbird. They are curious signals, and ones that stoke political interest more in Harper Lee herself than in her book. These declarations and the manner in which they are accomplished should be of interest to both literary devotees and political scientists, because they mark one of the main differences between Watchman and Mockingbird.
Here, we will focus on several of the more obscure and overlooked aspects of Watchman’s political tip-offs and what they illustrate about Harper Lee’s political leanings. We will do this to illustrate that the more ambiguous political “tells” are often the most compelling and intriguing. The nuisance and genteel markings of some of the “tells” are more than mildly provocative; these “tells” suggest a deep understanding of literary devices which seem curiously out of place in Watchman, and potentially say more about a young Harper Lee than her work. We do not want to push this point of “subtlety” too far, as many such maneuvers employed by Lee are true hit-over-the-head moments – but many others, not so much. We’ll call these “contrived light.” These are what we are after. This is, as they say, a ‘teachable moment.’
For openers, in the first twenty pages of Watchman there resides an oddly placed, 100-word passage. This is a small, tucked away section of great political subjectivity. I call attention to Lee’s debut introduction of her father, Atticus Finch. In this initial passage we find Atticus seated and reading a book titled The Strange Case of Alger Hiss. What we can say about this snapshot is that it was neither a casual insertion, nor a mistake. Writers do not (or should not) make mistakes in this fashion; the book is a deliberate reveal. Atticus is disapproving of the defense of Alger Hiss as outlined in the book. Atticus makes no bones about it as he criticizes the author, a Brit (i.e., Earl Jowitt), for having no understanding of American jurisprudence (p. 17).)
For those who need a reminder, the Hiss case erupted during the McCarthy era (c. 1950-1955). In a highly charged and controversial case, Alger Hiss was accused of spying for the USSR. However, when all was said and done, although he was found guilty, Hiss was probably innocent. Hiss served three and a half years, and he and his wife had their lives turned upside-down and utterly ruined. Now consider that the author of Strange Case, Earl Jowitt, was one of the people who argued on behalf of Hiss’s innocence. Consider next that Atticus Finch is disapproving of the book and Jowitt’s effort at vindication. Finch even levels some xenophobic sentiments at the English writer and questions his integrity. At the time of the writing of Watchman, the Hiss case (if not Jowitt’s book) would have been generally and widely known. This brief passage in Watchman reveals Atticus’s Southern conservatism in a manner only slightly camouflaged beneath a literary cloak. What is of interest here is that through this literary device, Lee need not openly assert that Atticus Finch leaned far to the right; the literary device, together with Finch’s comments, does that for her.
Next, let us look at page 20 of this edition, where the narrator suggests that “only God or Robert Browning knew what” Jean Louise (aka Scout) might say next. This is a huge declaration regarding Scout’s political inclinations, but one must wonder how many American readers in the 1960’s would be familiar with the Englishman Robert Browning’s political progressivism. This statement only makes sense if the reader has an understanding of Browning and 19th century English liberalism. Of course, the shrewdness of the Browning comment, and to a lesser extent the Alger Hiss example, marks the writer as a formidable manipulator of political triggers. Since there was no dramatic or literary reason for the inclusion of these sketches, they must have represented for Lee an opportunity to tip her hand. A more mature writer, such as the Harper Lee who authored Mockingbird, would have probably held off on any such formal declarations.
Now, let’s take one more peculiar example found in Watchman. On page 81 of the cited edition, Scout wanders over to a bookcase looking for a bedtime read. She runs her finger along the row of books, pausing at The Second Punic War (by Livy?), then passes on it to select The Reason Why. Admittedly, I didn’t know this last book and had to look it up. The topic of The Reason Why is the “Charge of The Light Brigade,” a disastrous Crimean War episode made famous by Lord Tennyson and a 1930’s movie with Errol Flynn (the book was authored by Cecil Woodham-Smith). These book titles cannot possibly have been an accidental placement by Harper Lee. So, if the juxtaposition of these two books was a deliberate move, what does it mean? While it is impossible to climb inside a writer’s head, it is possible to offer a shrewd speculation. From the outside, and in general, The Second Punic War is about the defeat of Carthage and its general, Hannibal. The Reason Why is an analysis of the heroic but doomed “Charge of The Light Brigade,” highlighting the dire consequences of miscommunication. In the absence of more clues and assuming only that the two books were not slipped into the narrative by happenstance, we must tease out a meaning: Why does Scout reject the first book in deference to the second? Scout later announces that the selection of the book was motivated by her need to “bone up for Uncle Jack.” However, as this claim is neither fully explained, unpacked nor acted upon, the selection remains somewhat mysterious.
My interpretation of the act is anchored in the fact that both books are on war – that each in its own way exemplifies the destruction of ideals. Going immediately to these books identifies Scout as combative, willful, and unafraid – a warrior for ideals. The selection of the second book, The Reason Why, and the analysis of the disaster known as the “Charge of The Light Brigade,” marks Scout as recognizing that heroism, even when wrapped in failure, can still be seen as a moral and ethical standard living vibrantly within defeat. While not exactly a Pyrrhic victory, the Light Brigade remains in literature, and British history, as a triumph of duty, courage and honor against overwhelming odds. This is Lee’s aim—to infer that Scout shares these values. In the mature Mockingbird, this mantle of moral advantage is draped about the shoulders of Atticus Finch.
As these politically charged sketches were dropped in Mockingbird, it would seem that someone on Lee’s editorial team considered the references as either ham-handed or an unwieldy in-congruence between the intellectual bent of the nuanced references and the southern, conservative social context; in other words, a distraction to the greater story of father and daughter. It was probably decided that the inclusion of these scenarios might actually undermine the message incipient in Watchman; they were either too heavy handed or too elitist. Greater subtlety of purpose was encouraged for Mockingbird.
It would seem that a prime element of the editorial assistance Lee received was criticism of the back and forth, uneven development of her political statements. Within Watchman there are multiple examples of blunt exhortations for change without resorting to gimmicky improvisations. However, our track here is to zero in on those political gimmicks, as they show how art can host ideological and political messages, both subtility and not subtility. Our contention is that all art and literature contain ideological messages, and the overt political overtones in Watchman provide ideal terrain for proving this contention.
Go Set a
Watchman, by Harper Lee, HarperCollins
Books, (New York, 2015) reviewed by WF Pray
Can we read Go Set a Watchman as an embryonic civil rights bombshell---a politically confused prequel to the more mature and sophisticated To Kill a Mockingbird – a book that stands as a solid testament to changing racial conditions in the South? Overall, this is the accepted chronology, and one that make sense given the different styles of the two different books.
Go Set a Watchman, can be read as a series of vignettes, a jumble of barely aligned sentiments in need of some serious editing – which in the end is exactly what happened. There are numerous reviews that explain Mockingbird as a cooperative effort between agents, editors and Lee.[1] While not all of these brief snapshots are openly politically biased, several of these sketches insist on serious analysis of their political content. The demand for analysis is driven partly by the odd and left-handed manner in which Lee declares her tilt toward liberalism using contrived literary signals. In the end, these signaling devices used in Watchman are of much greater significance than the author’s writing timetable. Watchman uses literary contrivances that speak to political undercurrents, but these contrivances were later dropped in Mockingbird. They are curious signals, and ones that stoke political interest more in Harper Lee herself than in her book. These declarations and the manner in which they are accomplished should be of interest to both literary devotees and political scientists, because they mark one of the main differences between Watchman and Mockingbird.
Here, we will focus on several of the more obscure and overlooked aspects of Watchman’s political tip-offs and what they illustrate about Harper Lee’s political leanings. We will do this to illustrate that the more ambiguous political “tells” are often the most compelling and intriguing. The nuisance and genteel markings of some of the “tells” are more than mildly provocative; these “tells” suggest a deep understanding of literary devices which seem curiously out of place in Watchman, and potentially say more about a young Harper Lee than her work. We do not want to push this point of “subtlety” too far, as many such maneuvers employed by Lee are true hit-over-the-head moments – but many others, not so much. We’ll call these “contrived light.” These are what we are after. This is, as they say, a ‘teachable moment.’
For openers, in the first twenty pages of Watchman there resides an oddly placed, 100-word passage. This is a small, tucked away section of great political subjectivity. I call attention to Lee’s debut introduction of her father, Atticus Finch. In this initial passage we find Atticus seated and reading a book titled The Strange Case of Alger Hiss. What we can say about this snapshot is that it was neither a casual insertion, nor a mistake. Writers do not (or should not) make mistakes in this fashion; the book is a deliberate reveal. Atticus is disapproving of the defense of Alger Hiss as outlined in the book. Atticus makes no bones about it as he criticizes the author, a Brit (i.e., Earl Jowitt), for having no understanding of American jurisprudence (p. 17).)
For those who need a reminder, the Hiss case erupted during the McCarthy era (c. 1950-1955). In a highly charged and controversial case, Alger Hiss was accused of spying for the USSR. However, when all was said and done, although he was found guilty, Hiss was probably innocent. Hiss served three and a half years, and he and his wife had their lives turned upside-down and utterly ruined. Now consider that the author of Strange Case, Earl Jowitt, was one of the people who argued on behalf of Hiss’s innocence. Consider next that Atticus Finch is disapproving of the book and Jowitt’s effort at vindication. Finch even levels some xenophobic sentiments at the English writer and questions his integrity. At the time of the writing of Watchman, the Hiss case (if not Jowitt’s book) would have been generally and widely known. This brief passage in Watchman reveals Atticus’s Southern conservatism in a manner only slightly camouflaged beneath a literary cloak. What is of interest here is that through this literary device, Lee need not openly assert that Atticus Finch leaned far to the right; the literary device, together with Finch’s comments, does that for her.
Next, let us look at page 20 of this edition, where the narrator suggests that “only God or Robert Browning knew what” Jean Louise (aka Scout) might say next. This is a huge declaration regarding Scout’s political inclinations, but one must wonder how many American readers in the 1960’s would be familiar with the Englishman Robert Browning’s political progressivism. This statement only makes sense if the reader has an understanding of Browning and 19th century English liberalism. Of course, the shrewdness of the Browning comment, and to a lesser extent the Alger Hiss example, marks the writer as a formidable manipulator of political triggers. Since there was no dramatic or literary reason for the inclusion of these sketches, they must have represented for Lee an opportunity to tip her hand. A more mature writer, such as the Harper Lee who authored Mockingbird, would have probably held off on any such formal declarations.
Now, let’s take one more peculiar example found in Watchman. On page 81 of the cited edition, Scout wanders over to a bookcase looking for a bedtime read. She runs her finger along the row of books, pausing at The Second Punic War (by Livy?), then passes on it to select The Reason Why. Admittedly, I didn’t know this last book and had to look it up. The topic of The Reason Why is the “Charge of The Light Brigade,” a disastrous Crimean War episode made famous by Lord Tennyson and a 1930’s movie with Errol Flynn (the book was authored by Cecil Woodham-Smith). These book titles cannot possibly have been an accidental placement by Harper Lee. So, if the juxtaposition of these two books was a deliberate move, what does it mean? While it is impossible to climb inside a writer’s head, it is possible to offer a shrewd speculation. From the outside, and in general, The Second Punic War is about the defeat of Carthage and its general, Hannibal. The Reason Why is an analysis of the heroic but doomed “Charge of The Light Brigade,” highlighting the dire consequences of miscommunication. In the absence of more clues and assuming only that the two books were not slipped into the narrative by happenstance, we must tease out a meaning: Why does Scout reject the first book in deference to the second? Scout later announces that the selection of the book was motivated by her need to “bone up for Uncle Jack.” However, as this claim is neither fully explained, unpacked nor acted upon, the selection remains somewhat mysterious.
My interpretation of the act is anchored in the fact that both books are on war – that each in its own way exemplifies the destruction of ideals. Going immediately to these books identifies Scout as combative, willful, and unafraid – a warrior for ideals. The selection of the second book, The Reason Why, and the analysis of the disaster known as the “Charge of The Light Brigade,” marks Scout as recognizing that heroism, even when wrapped in failure, can still be seen as a moral and ethical standard living vibrantly within defeat. While not exactly a Pyrrhic victory, the Light Brigade remains in literature, and British history, as a triumph of duty, courage and honor against overwhelming odds. This is Lee’s aim—to infer that Scout shares these values. In the mature Mockingbird, this mantle of moral advantage is draped about the shoulders of Atticus Finch.
As these politically charged sketches were dropped in Mockingbird, it would seem that someone on Lee’s editorial team considered the references as either ham-handed or an unwieldy in-congruence between the intellectual bent of the nuanced references and the southern, conservative social context; in other words, a distraction to the greater story of father and daughter. It was probably decided that the inclusion of these scenarios might actually undermine the message incipient in Watchman; they were either too heavy handed or too elitist. Greater subtlety of purpose was encouraged for Mockingbird.
It would seem that a prime element of the editorial assistance Lee received was criticism of the back and forth, uneven development of her political statements. Within Watchman there are multiple examples of blunt exhortations for change without resorting to gimmicky improvisations. However, our track here is to zero in on those political gimmicks, as they show how art can host ideological and political messages, both subtility and not subtility. Our contention is that all art and literature contain ideological messages, and the overt political overtones in Watchman provide ideal terrain for proving this contention.
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