Go Set a WatchmanQuestions-
1. Describe the Maycomb of Go Set a Watchman.
2. What is the status of the Finch family in Maycomb, andwhat privileges, expectations, responsibilities and freedomsdo they have?
3. Describe Jean Louise Finch of WATCHMAN. How does sheconform or not conform to the ideal of womanhood in the 1950s? How does she compare to her aunt and the other women of Maycomb?
4. How has living in New York had an impact on Jean Louise? How does she now view Maycomb and its residents?
5. "Integrity, humor and patience" were the three words to describe Atticus. After reading WATCHMAN do these words still apply? Why or why not?
6. What are Jean Louise's feelings toward Henry Clinton? Why? Why do her aunt and uncle feel that he is unsuitable?
7. Why is Maycomb isolated and how does that isolation affect how the people see themselves and outsiders?
8. How does Harper Leedescribe the period, politics and attitudes of the small, Southern town?
9. Describe the relationship between Jean Louise and Atticus at the beginning of the novel? How does she react when she discovers that her father is a flawed human being?
10. By the novel's end how do father and daughter accommodate each other?
11. Why does Maycomb have a citizens' council and why does this upset Jean Louise that almost everyone in town belongs to it?
12. How do Atticus's actions toward the Blacks in the towncompare with his views about them?
13. When the racist segregationist ,Grady O'Hanlon, spoke at the meeting, were Atticus and Henry defending his First Amendment right to free speech-or were they condoning his message?
14. What kind of reception does Jean Louise receive in the Quarters when she visits Calpurnia, the Finches' retired housekeeper? When Jean Louise asks Calpurnia how she truly felt about the family, how did Calpurnia answer? Do you think she was truthful?
15. GO SET A WATCHMAN was written after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education. How did that decision impact the nation and especially the South?
16. What is Jean Louise's opinion of that decision? What is Atticus's opinion? How do their responses reflect reaction to Supreme Court decisions involving minority rights?
17. Near the end of the novel Jean Louise questions herself. She says, "Everything I have ever taken for right and wrong these people have taught me-these same, these very people. So it's me; it's not them. Something has happened to me. Something has happened to me." Do you agree with her? Has she changed?
18. Atticus says to Jean Louise, " I've killed you, Scout. I had to." What does he mean?
19. Late in the novel, Uncle Jack tells his niece, "Every man's island, Jean Louise, every man's watchman, is his conscience." What wisdom is he imparting to her? Uncle Jack also calls Jean Louise a "turnip-sized bigot." Is she? Why?
20. What is the significance of the book's title? It is a Bible verse: "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth."