What makes Atticus Finch compelling as a moral figure?

He is competent, principled, and consistent. He holds his values in public and private — what he teaches his children at home matches what he does in court. He is not heroic in the Hollywood sense: he does not win dramatically, he does not deliver rousing speeches that change minds, he does not ultimately save the innocent man he defends.

But he does the right thing. He defends a man he knows will be convicted in a system he knows is unjust, because he believes the work of justice is worth doing even when it fails. This is a genuinely sophisticated moral position.

What are the legitimate criticisms?

To Kill a Mockingbird centers the white lawyer's moral journey more than the Black community's experience of the injustice. Tom Robinson's inner life is almost entirely absent. Atticus is the hero of his own children's story — which is how the novel frames it — but this creates a distorted picture of who actually bears the cost of racial injustice.

Go Set a Watchman, the novel Harper Lee published in 2015, contains an older Atticus who holds views about integration that are far less admirable than his younger self's defense of Tom Robinson. This has complicated the character's moral authority significantly.

Can he still be a useful moral model?

Yes, with appropriate complexity. His core lessons — take your conscience seriously, do what you know is right regardless of cost, try genuinely to understand others — remain valuable. But they should be held alongside the recognition that his perspective is limited, that his heroism is partial, and that the story he inhabits tells a very specific slice of a much larger reality.