Harper Lee’s novel Go Set a Watchman focuses on the issue of sight.
Jean Louise Finch grew up in a small Alabama town named Maycomb in the 1930’s and 1940’s. From her childlike perspective, it seems that whites and blacks loved and trusted one another. But when she returns home after leaving it for New York City, things have changed. White civic leaders like her father Atticus who once seemed colorblind and eager to assist any person regardless of color now appear to see those same blacks through a different lens. In one scene that literally turns Jean Louise’s stomach, she witnesses her father supporting a white racist in town who spews hatred toward blacks. Jean Louise can’t fathom how Atticus has come to see blacks in such a negative light.
But it’s not only whites whose sight seems to have changed. It’s also the blacks. During Jean Louise’s visit home, a young black man accidentally hits and kills a man with his vehicle. He’s the grandson of a black woman named Calpurnia, or “Cal,” who served as Jean Louise’s nanny. Cal and Jean Louise had been as close as a mother and a daughter. Years ago, when Jean Louise’s brother Jim died, Cal wept with Jean Louise and nurtured her like only a mother could. But when Jean Louise calls on Cal after her grandson’s arrest for vehicular homicide, she’s surprised by the way Cal and her family treat her. No warmth. No tenderness. Just curt courtesy. Jean Louise remarks,
“She sat there in front of me and she didn’t see me. She saw white folks. She raised me, and she doesn’t care. It was not always like this. I swear it wasn’t. People used to trust each other for some reason. I’ve forgotten why. They didn’t watch each other like hawks then. I wouldn’t get looks like that going up those steps ten years ago. She never wore her company manners with one of us. When Jim died, her precious Jim, it nearly killed her.” (Chapter 12 3:55)
“She sat there in front of me and didn’t see me.” This is the disease now afflicting everyone in Maycomb.
Later, Jean Louise talks with a childhood friend named Hester. Hester talks in racist terms about blacks in Maycomb County. Jean Louise is shocked once more. She reflects,
“We were both born here. We went to the same schools. We were taught the same things. I wonder what you saw and heard…” (Chapter 13 4:15).
Jean Louise then talks to Claudine, another childhood friend in Maycomb. Claudine has recently returned from a trip to New York City, where Jean Louise now lives. Claudine expresses amazement that while she was in New York, a black woman sat down right next to her at a drugstore. Such things just didn’t happen in Maycomb.
“I don’t see how you live up there with them,” Claudine says.
“You aren’t aware of them,” Jean Louise comments. “You work with them, eat by and with them, ride buses with them and aren’t aware of them unless you want to be…You just don’t notice it.”
“Well I certainly noticed it,” Claudine states. “You must be blind or something.”
“Blind, that’s what I am,” Jean Louise realizes. Shen then reflects on the sermon she heard a church in Maycomb the previous Sunday. The minister spoke from Isaiah about the people’s need for a watchman (Is. 21:6). “I need a watchman,” Jean Louise thinks. “To lead me around and declare what he seeth, every hour, on the hour.”
One of the primary issues in the novel is the way we humans see each other, and how that sight changes over time.
This is the issue raised by Jesus in his “Good Samaritan” parable. A man, clearly a Jewish man, is robbed, beaten and left half-dead on a dangerous strip of road between Jerusalem and Jericho. Three people stumble upon him. Three people “see” him. But only the third sees the victim correctly–because what he sees leads him to stop, bind the man’s wounds, use wine to clean the wounds and ease the man’s pain, use oil to soften the skin and speed healing, take the man to an inn, nurse him through the night, leave resources for the innkeeper to provide for the man’s needs, and promise to return soon to check on both of them.
Were we in the audience as Jesus told his story, we would have naturally expected the third person to be a Jewish layperson. We’ve watched a priest and a Levite pass by. Thus, we would now expect a Jewish layperson to pass by. And the story would have carried a sharp but nonetheless expected critique of hypocritical religious leaders. But Jesus doesn’t fulfill our expectations. He introduces the third person as a Samaritan. Why? Jesus brings a Samaritan in so that he can make a radical point about sight.
As this Samaritan stumbled upon this Jewish victim, it would have been natural for him to see an enemy. If the third person was simply a Jewish layperson, it would make sense for him to stop. He would see a fellow Jew lying on the road. A fellow God-chosen man. A fellow son of Abraham. And the conventional wisdom of the day would support his effort to provide aid to this fellow Jew. After all, loving neighbor in that day basically meant loving your own. But this would not be the case for a Samaritan. Samaritans and Jews often could see nothing of value in each other. Listen to these ancient testimonies:
- “Shechem shall be called ‘City of the Senseless,’ because as one might scoff at a fool, so we scoffed at them.” (T. Levi 7.2)
- “He that eats the bread of the Samaritans is like to one that eats the flesh of swine.” (m. Sebi it 810)
In 9 A. D. Samaritans scattered bones in the Temple, rendering it unclean. In 50 A. D. Samaritans slaughtered Jewish pilgrims traveling through Samaria to Jerusalem.
In fact, just a few days before Jesus tells this story, his own Jewish disciples have been spurned by Samaritans. In response, the disciples want to “tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them” (Lk. 9:54).
There was long-standing and deep bad blood between the two groups. Thus we would expect the traveling Samaritan to see this Jewish victim as an enemy, a tyrant, and not at all worthy of his time and resources. Instead, he sees a fellow human in need of aid and he renders compassion and mercy to him.
Jesus’ point seems to be not only that love must be willing to travel beyond the boundaries of Temple and other prescribed religious duties (the priest & Levite). But love must also be willing to travel beyond the boundaries of race, class and any “ism” currently dividing people (the Samaritan).
The parable stands as a kind of watchman. It goes before us, leading the way as we exit our homes and our church buildings. It walks before us as we drive city streets, walk neighborhoods, shop in stores, sit in classrooms and play on sports fields. And it asks us “Who do you see?” It proclaims, “I see a human in need.” And it calls us to be willing to put love and faith into action wherever we find ourselves.
