Go Set a Watchman Chapter 8 Summary

  • Jean Louise finds a racist pamphlet in her father's office: The Black Plague (8.16). It's not about the bubonic plague. Nope, it's about black people.
  • She learns from Alexandra that Atticus and Henry have been attending a County Citizens' Council, which is basically a meeting for white men to go to and talk about the evils of black people and integration.
  • Yowza.
  • Jean Louise has to see it for herself.
  • Sure enough, Atticus and Henry are both there, sitting down as a man named Grady O'Hanlon spouts his racist beliefs.
  • Jean Louise is shocked. She remembers the time her father defended a black man, and won him an acquittal. (Did you notice that this is different from To Kill A Mockingbird, where Finch does not win his case?)
  • Seeing Atticus at this meeting makes her sick to her stomach...obvs.
  • She staggers from the courthouse, and she stumbles through the streets until she finds herself at the ice cream shop where her old house used to stand.
  • The man who runs the shop recognizes her and offers to give her a free serving if she guesses his name.
  • But...she doesn't know his name.
  • She orders a container of ice cream and takes it around back to be alone with her ice cream and her disgust with her father.