Go Set a Watchman: Part 1

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.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. profane
    grossly irreverent toward what is held to be sacred
    Her father had a way of undermining his sister’s lectures on the innate superiority of any given Finch: he always told his daughter the rest of it, quietly and solemnly, but Jean Louise sometimes thought she detected an unmistakably profane glint in Atticus Finch’s eyes, or was it merely the light hitting his glasses?
  2. predilection
    a predisposition in favor of something
    Until comparatively recently in its history, Maycomb County was so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the South’s political predilections over the past ninety years, still voted Republican.
  3. inequity
    injustice by virtue of not conforming with standards
    She was too old to rail against the inequity of it, but too young to accept her father’s crippling disease without putting up some kind of fight.
  4. profound
    of the greatest intensity; complete
    Although she was a respectable driver, she hated to operate anything mechanical more complicated than a safety pin: folding lawn chairs were a source of profound irritation to her; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typewriter; she fished with a pole.
  5. fractious
    stubbornly resistant to authority or control
    In the years when he was away at the war and the University, she had turned from an overalled, fractious, gun-slinging creature into a reasonable facsimile of a human being.
  6. abjure
    formally reject or disavow a formerly held belief
    He began dating her on her annual two-week visits home, and although she still moved like a thirteen-year-old boy and abjured most feminine adornment, he found something so intensely feminine about her that he fell in love.
  7. afflicted
    grievously affected especially by disease
    She was afflicted with a restlessness of spirit he could not guess at, but he knew she was the one for him.
  8. dissemble
    make believe with the intent to deceive
    “You’re an odd one, sweet. You can’t dissemble.”
  9. rumination
    a calm, lengthy, intent consideration
    Alexandra’s voice cut through her ruminations: “Jean Louise, did you come down on the train Like That?”
  10. impression
    an imitative portrayal of a person
    “If the folks in Maycomb don’t get one impression, they’ll get another. They’re certainly not used to seeing me dressed up.”
  11. disapprobation
    an expression of strong disapproval
    When registering disapprobation, he always reverted back to her childhood nickname.
  12. irreconcilable
    impossible to bring into accord
    Now that Jean Louise was grown, they had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes’ conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view
  13. abrasive
    causing irritation or erosion by friction
    There were so many things about her aunt Jean Louise secretly delighted in when half a continent separated them, which on contact were abrasive, and were canceled out when Jean Louise undertook to examine her aunt’s motives.
  14. prerogative
    a right reserved exclusively by a person or group
    When Alexandra went to finishing school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning; she was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.
  15. conscience
    motivation deriving from ethical or moral principles
    She was completely unaware that with one twist of the tongue she could plunge Jean Louise into a moral turmoil by making her niece doubt her own motives and best intentions, by tweaking the protestant, philistine strings of Jean Louise’s conscience until they vibrated like a spectral zither.
  16. disarm
    make less hostile; win over
    This was two years ago, and Jean Louise had long since quit worrying about how thoughtless she was, and Alexandra had disarmed her by performing the one generous act of Alexandra’s life: when Atticus developed arthritis, Alexandra went to live with him.
  17. callous
    emotionally hardened
    Her schooldays were her most miserable days, she was unsentimental to the point of callousness about the women’s college she had attended, nothing displeased her more than to be set in the middle of a group of people who played Remember Old So-and-So.
  18. benign
    pleasant and beneficial in nature or influence
    Atticus Finch had watched Henry’s ragged pursuit of his daughter with benign objectivity, giving advice when asked for it, but absolutely declining to become involved.
  19. nettle
    disturb, especially by minor irritations
    Not that they needed understanding—young people were the same in every generation—but this cockiness, this refusal to take seriously the gravest questions of their lives, nettled and irritated her.
  20. mock
    treat with contempt
    Jean Louise was about to make the worst mistake of her life, and she glibly quoted those people at her, she mocked her.
  21. reap
    get or derive
    Atticus had let her run wild since she was two years old, and look what he had reaped.
  22. ritual
    any customary observance or practice
    The ritual enacted on Saturday nights between Jean Louise and her father was too old to be broken.
  23. blasphemy
    the act of depriving something of its sacred character
    When Jean Louise and her brother were children, Atticus had occasionally drawn them a sharp distinction between mere scatology and blasphemy.
  24. abide
    put up with something or somebody unpleasant
    The one he could abide; he hated dragging God into it.
  25. mystical
    beyond ordinary understanding
    The Finch doorbell was a mystical instrument; it was possible to tell the state of mind of whoever pushed it.
Created on Sun Sep 20 15:39:13 EDT 2015 (updated Wed Sep 12 14:14:53 EDT 2018)

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