Go Set a Watchman: Part 7

by Harper Lee
This novel was author Harper Lee's first attempt at telling the story of Jean Louise Finch and her Southern childhood. After receiving feedback from her editor, Lee reworked the story into the widely beloved To Kill a Mockingbird. More than half a century after that novel's worldwide success, readers have a chance to see how it all began.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Here is a link to our lists for To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
25 words 33 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. instinct
    inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to stimuli
    I guess when you’re hurt your first instinct’s to hurt back.
  2. parable
    a short moral story
    I just can’t take any more of your parables and diddering around.
  3. reverberation
    an echo
    Gradually, the gonglike reverberations in her head subsided, and her ears stopped ringing.
  4. immaculate
    completely neat and clean
    His walking stick nestled in his left elbow; his vest was immaculate; there was a scarlet rosebud in his lapel.
  5. contemplate
    look at thoughtfully; observe deep in thought
    When she opened them she saw her uncle sitting on the sofa contemplating her placidly.
  6. bearable
    capable of being endured
    It’s bearable, Jean Louise, because you are your own person now.
  7. conceited
    having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
    “It’s rather complicated,” he said, “and I don’t want you to fall into the tiresome error of being conceited about your complexes—you’d bore us for the rest of our lives with that, so we’ll keep away from it.
  8. barnacle
    marine crustacean with feathery food-catching appendages
    . . . now you, Miss, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father’s.
  9. grant
    be willing to concede
    You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings—I’ll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes ’em like all of us.
  10. assume
    take to be the case or to be true
    You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers.
  11. antithesis
    exact opposite
    When you happened along and saw him doing something that seemed to you to be the very antithesis of his conscience—your conscience—you literally could not stand it.
  12. entity
    that which is perceived to have its own distinct existence
    You had to kill yourself, or he had to kill you to get you functioning as a separate entity.
  13. status
    the relative position or standing of things or persons
    He was letting you reduce him to the status of a human being.
  14. obliterate
    do away with completely, without leaving a trace
    She had tried to tear him to pieces, to wreck him, to obliterate him.
  15. bigot
    a prejudiced person who is intolerant of differing opinions
    you’re very much like him, except you’re a bigot and he’s not.
  16. rigid
    incapable of compromise or flexibility
    What does a bigot do when he meets someone who challenges his opinions? He doesn’t give. He stays rigid. Doesn’t even try to listen, just lashes out.
  17. tendency
    a natural inclination toward a certain condition
    You have a tendency not to give anybody elbow room in your mind for their ideas, no matter how silly you think they are.
  18. disillusioned
    freed from false ideas
    “Uncle Jack, I thought I’d gone through all that being-disillusioned-about-your-parents stuff when I took my bachelor’s degree, but there’s something—”
  19. impersonal
    having no individual preference
    She wondered how many times his hands in rubber gloves, impersonal and omnipotent, had set some child on its feet.
  20. prod
    urge on; cause to act
    You’ve never been prodded to look at people as a race, and now that race is the burning issue of the day, you’re still unable to think racially.
  21. miasma
    an unwholesome atmosphere
    If they can’t scare us with the essential inferiority line, they’ll wrap it in a miasma of sex, because that’s the one thing they know is feared in our fundamentalist hearts down here.
  22. belligerent
    characteristic of an enemy or one eager to fight
    You’re mighty belligerent toward a feeble old man, but if you wish to continue in darkness that is your privilege.
  23. humble
    marked by meekness or modesty; not arrogant or prideful
    "I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days. You don’t have it yet, but you have a shadow of the beginnings of it. You haven’t the humbleness of mind—”
  24. spleen
    a feeling of resentful anger
    He poked his head inside the window, elevated his eyebrows, and said in a decorous voice:
    “I was once an exceedingly odd young lady—
    Suffering much from spleen and vapors.
  25. tremble
    move quickly and involuntarily up and down or sideways
    As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little.
Created on Sun Sep 20 16:53:39 EDT 2015 (updated Wed Sep 12 14:17:01 EDT 2018)

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