SOURCE: Atkinson, Rob. “Comment on Steven Lubet, ‘Reconstructing Atticus Finch.’” Michigan Law Review 97, no. 6 (May 1999): 1370-72.

In the following essay, Atkinson responds to the essay “Reconstructing Atticus Finch,” by Steven Lubet. Atkinson argues that, taking To Kill a Mockingbird on its own “childishly simplistic” moral terms, Atticus Finch is certainly a role model. However, Atkinson concludes that the book is a less complex and morally challenging novel than it is given credit for.

Professor Lubet has joined a growing list of revisionists who question Atticus's standing as the paragon of lawyerly virtue [in To Kill a Mockingbird,].¹ But Professor Lubet takes revisionism in a distinctly postmodern direction, if not to a radically new level. Atticus's previous critics have wondered how he could have overlooked, perhaps even condoned, the pervasive racism, sexism, and classism of the Depression-era South. They have even occasionally censured his paternalism toward his pro bono...