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1-Page Summary of Go Set A Watchman

Jean Louise Finch travels to her hometown of Maycomb, Alabama, for a two-week visit. She is the daughter of Atticus Finch, who is an influential lawyer in town. Her brother Jem died suddenly years ago when he was still young.

Jean Louise reconnects with Henry Clinton, who works in Atticus’ law office. He and Jean Louise have been a couple for several years but she still won’t marry him. They visit her family home where they go swimming at night. She has flashbacks to when she was young and played with Jem and Dill. She fondly remembers re-enacting scenes from both fiction (books) and reality (life). While on the way back to town, they encounter a car full of black people going extremely fast, which Henry says is because they can afford cars but don’t have licenses or insurance.

The next morning, Jean Louise and Henry’s trip has made the rounds of the town gossip. Alexandra is scandalized by it, but Jean Louise and Atticus are mildly amused. They go to church with the rest of their family where they sing a hymn in a different rhythm than usual.

After church, Atticus and Henry leave for a political meeting. Jean Louise finds a racist pamphlet titled “The Black Plague” among Atticus’s papers, and she is horrified. She follows Atticus and Henry to their meeting, which turns out to be a gathering of the Maycomb County Citizen’s Council, an organization promoting segregation and white supremacy. Nearly all the men in town are there, except Uncle Jack. The meeting is in the courthouse where Jean Louise had watched her father defend a black man who was on trial for rape when she was young girl. Now that she’s older though, Jean Louise is disgusted that her father can be part of something so racist; furthermore he’d never really been her moral compass after all as it seemed like his values were shifting with time.

The next morning, the family learns that Calpurnia’s grandson had killed a pedestrian while speeding in his car. Atticus takes the case, but only to stop the NAACP from coming into town and getting involved. Jean Louise visits Calpurnia, but Calpurnia treats her politely and coldly without any sign of affection whatsoever. She has lunch with Uncle Jack and asks him how Atticus could allow himself to be involved with a racist organization like the KKK (Ku Klux Klan). Uncle Jack tries to explain that Atticus isn’t necessarily a racist himself, but he has to maintain appearances for the people of Maycomb because they’re very conservative and don’t want change. He also explains that there is an ongoing struggle between those who support civil rights for black people (i.e., liberals) and those who oppose it (i.e., conservatives), which is why Atticus can’t come out against racism publicly despite being opposed to it personally; he needs to understand what these people are thinking in order not be blindsided by them later on when they try something else underhanded or illegal.

Jean Louise has a flashback to when she was young and going to her first dance. She had just started feeling like a woman, not just Jem’s little sister or Scout’s kid sister. The next day at school, the principal found Jean Louise’s false bosoms. Henry came up with an idea that saved the day, but Atticus planted the seed of it in his mind.

Jean Louise has coffee with Atticus and Henry, and she yells at them for being hypocrites. As she is yelling, she realizes that her father is standing right there. She goes to his office with him, where they argue about states’ rights and the NAACP. Jean Louise thinks that it was morally wrong to go against the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but she argues that they had to do what was right even if it wasn’t politically correct.