In 1960, now famous author Harper Lee published her first, best-selling novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel quickly arose to fame, telling the story of a false accusation of rape and rampant racial inequality in Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. Protagonist Scout tells a hopeful tale filled with humor and taste, despite tackling such serious themes.

The novel quickly became a high school classic, and 55 years later, its themes still resonate. Father and do-gooder Atticus Finch provided a needed vocal conscious for the novel, and each character represented a prevalent idea that lives on to this day.

Today, Go Set a Watchmen was released to much anticipation from Lee's fans. However, the novel was met with mixed reviews from critics, many now reevaluating Lee's true intent with the initial publication of what's considered a classic of modern American literature.

The novel follows the now adult Scout, who goes by her given name of Jean Louise Finch, traveling back to Maycomb to visit her aging father Atticus. The entire story takes place 20 years after To Kill a Mockingbird, and forces Scout to reexamine her father's attitudes about race and the town in which she was raised. The novel dips in and out of the initial storyline of To Kill a Mockingbird, providing more context and analysis than in the first novel.

Wall Street Journal reporter Sam Sacks describes Go Set a Watchmen as a "distressing book," that topples idols with a major component of "disillusion." However, other critics such as Joanne Harris of The Mail believes the book, although definitely not easy, challenges the reader with a tale of "brutally coming of age into a changing world." Lee's new novel reads as one of self-acceptance, and the perpetual struggle for racial equality. Harris adds, that the tale encourages readers to both "see how far we have already come towards Scout's dream of equality and how far we still have to go."

Undoubtedly, this book will change the conversation in American literature immensely. Now that the sequel, or as The Telegraph writer Gabby Wood describes it: "the ghost" of To Kill A Mockingbird has been released, the two books cannot be understood without the other. Mark Lawson, writer at The Guardian, explains that the new novel "shakes the settled view of both an author and her novel." He adds that unless another surprise is in store, "this publication intensifies the regret that Harper Lee published so little."

Regardless, Lee's new novel paints a more holistic picture of the story she intended to tell. Each character has now developed into their true, final self, and this gives readers a sense of closure yet melancholy for their former selves. The novel shows that a character's morality falls on a spectrum, and judging them prior to the finale is misguided.