Go Set a Watchman: Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

That afternoon Hank comes by to get Atticus for a “meeting” at the courthouse, and he solidifies his plans with Jean Louise for that night, despite Aunt Alexandra’s disapproval. Atticus leaves with Hank. Jean Louise goes into the living room and finds a pamphlet called “The Black Plague” among the papers beside her father’s chair. She reads it. It’s a racist tract about the supposed inferiority of blacks.

Jean Louise goes to throw the pamphlet in the trash, but Aunt Alexandra stops her. She says it makes some good points, and remains serious when Jean Louise tries to joke about the ridiculous statements it makes about scientific racial inferiority. Aunt Alexandra says it’s something that Atticus brought home from a Maycomb citizens’ council meeting. Atticus is on the board of directors, and Hank is “one of the staunchest members.” That’s the meeting they are at right now.

Jean Louise leaves the house immediately, planning on going to the courthouse and figuring out what’s going on. She has read about “citizens’ councils” in the New York newspapers—how they are made up of the same people who were once in the Ku Klux Klan—“ignorant, fear-ridden, red-faced, boorish, law-abiding, one hundred per cent red-blooded Anglo-Saxons, her fellow Americans—trash.”

Jean Louise is surprised to see that the town is almost deserted, and then realizes that everyone is at the courthouse. She goes inside and up to the balcony, which is usually for “blacks only,” where she and Jem used to sit to watch Atticus when he was in court. Jean Louise looks down and sees not only the “trash” of Maycomb County, but also its most respectable men, including her father and Hank, both of them at a table set apart from the crowd.

At the same table is William Willoughby, a corrupt politician who essentially runs Maycomb County without holding any public office, taking advantage of others’ poverty to keep his power. Jean Louise knows that Atticus would normally never even speak to Willoughby, but now they are sitting at the same table. There are many other men Jean Louise recognizes from town as well.

The clock strikes two and Atticus stands up, tersely introducing the speaker for today, a man named Grady O’Hanlon. Mr. O’Hanlon rises and Jean Louise can immediately tell that he is an average citizen who quit his job and now works full time to fight against integration. Mr. O’Hanlon’s speech is full of racist slurs against blacks, warnings of “mongrelizing” the white race through interracial marriage, praise for the “Southern Way of Life,” and condemnation of the “communist” Supreme Court.

As she listens, Jean Louise is reminded of a scene twenty years earlier, when she sat in the same spot and watched Atticus defend a black man against a white woman on a rape charge. Then Atticus had said “equal rights for all, special privileges for none,” and these words now seem juxtaposed with Mr. O’Hanlon’s racist rant. At that trial Atticus had risked his career and had won an extremely rare acquittal for the black defendant. The white girl was only fourteen, but he had proven consent because she didn’t press statutory rape, and the defendant had only one arm. Atticus hadn’t known that Jean Louise and Jem had watched the entire court session.

Mr. O’Hanlon’s speech keeps going, growing even more vicious and offensive, and Jean Louise starts sweating and panicking to see Atticus and Hank sitting to either side of him, seemingly condoning his words. Uncle Jack seems like the only man in Maycomb not present at this meeting. Jean Louise feels physically sick, and she stumbles out of the courthouse.

Jean Louise steps outside and looks around at the town in the harsh light of the sun. Maycomb itself seems to say to her “there is no place for you here.” Jean Louise walks down the street and remembers her old neighbors, like Mrs. Dubose and Miss Rachel. She unconsciously walks to the location of her old home, and finds herself in front of the ice cream shop that has replaced it.

The man at the ice cream shop recognizes Jean Louise, but she doesn’t recognize him. She buys a scoop of vanilla and he promises her a free second helping if she can guess who he is. She goes around behind the shop and sits at a picnic table. What was once her back yard is now treeless and covered in gravel. Suddenly she feels nauseated, and is sure that Atticus, the man she trusted and admired most of anyone in the world, has betrayed her.