Harper Lee's 'Go Set A Watchman' Spoilers: Atticus Finch ‘Segregationist’ Dark Side Dismays Reading Public

Harper Lee's new book 'Go Set A Watchman', set to officially hit book shops on July 14 Tuesday, disorients fans as she is said to give out an entirely different character of Atticus Finch being a racist and segregationist.

A book review of the New York Times made several comparisons of Atticus Finch's character in the two books. It emphasized that Finch in Lee's 'Go Set A Watchman' is a racist with lines like "The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people."

In one scene, Atticus asks his daughter: "Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?"

BBC also described Atticus Finch as a 'bigot' and the whole book as 'distressing' to The Mocking Bird's fans who revered the book for being its moral conscience amidst racism in the 1950s.

"For the millions who hold that novel dear, Go Set a Watchman will be a test of their tolerance and capacity for forgiveness."

Due to the audience's dismay on racist themes in Lee's latest book, Publisher Harper Collins defended their part saying that the 89-year old author has ordered them to publish the book 'without editorial intervention' and further asked audiences to take Finch's character in a broader context.

"The question of Atticus's racism is one of the most important and critical elements in this novel and it should be considered in the context of the book's broader moral themes," the statement said.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal attributed Atticus Finch's differences in character in the two books to the transformation of Harper Lee's father, Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer who had defended a Black person for alleged raping of a White woman-a scene found in The Mocking Bird.

The source said that biographies about Lee's father described him as somebody who is at first a segregationist but had a change of heart and decided to be an integrationist later on.