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[quote=Anonymous][i]PP, how did you come to terms with the fact that the Tom Robinson plot line was COMPLETELY changed in GSAW?[/i]

That was hard, but it was harder for me to come to terms with Atticus's beliefs and Jean Louise's complete disillusionment. Seeing her decide that her childhood vision of Atticus as wise and perfect (which was also my view of him in TKAM) was wrong was hard to read. I was ready after the press to read about ATticus as a racist, but I was hoping he'd strike me as a completely different character. It was upsetting to me (even though I try to remind myself they are just made up characters!) to see that Jean Louise in GSAW seems to be remembering the same father that all of us who've read and loved TKAM are remembering. It made me feel just as taken in by Atticus as Scout was! It also made me wonder so much about how Lee was able to write TKAM. It starts to take on a really different spin when you think of her vision of Atticus in his 70s that she wrote in GSAW. It's so hard to believe that she could have written TKAM with the innocent voice of Scout. That's obviously not to say there isn't plenty of racism in TKAM, but there are at least redeemable characters that give the book hope. GSAW feels pretty bleak as only Scout, who has lived somewhere other than the South, speaks out against racism.

[i]Also curious as to what you meant by losing out on crafting of the text....
[/i]

I felt that in the last section or two of the book she got so caught up in the arguments between Jean Louise and Atticus and Jean Louise and her Uncle that she kind of lost the flow of her beautiful descriptions of setting and culture. In TKAM I don't feel that she ever loses that flow and voice, but in GSAW I felt that the dialogue got a little bit more in to an argument about race that any two people could have had rather than keeping a voice unique to the characters. In other words, she wasn't as able to craft a story to get her point across; instead she had to resort to straight ahead dialogue. It's fine, just not as moving, interesting or subtle as it could have been. I suppose that was the point, but it was kind of like getting smacked across the face with it. [/quote]

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