Atticus Finch which they became lawyers. Freedman argued that Atticus Finch is dishonest, unethical, sexist, and inherently racist, and that he did nothing to challenge the racist status quo in Maycomb. Freedman's article sparked furious controversy, with one legal scholar opining, "What Monroe really wants is for Atticus to be working on the front lines for the NAACP in the 1930s, and, if he's not, he's disqualified from being any kind of hero; Monroe has this vision of lawyer as prophet. Atticus has a vision of lawyer not only as prophet but as parish priest". In 1997 the Alabama State Bar erected
Atticus Finch 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900" names Finch as the seventh best fictional character of 20th-century literature. In 2003 the American Film Institute voted Atticus Finch, as portrayed in an Academy Award-winning performance by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film adaptation, as the greatest hero of all American cinema. In the 2018 Broadway stage play adapted by Aaron Sorkin, Finch is portrayed by Jeff Daniels. Claudia Durst Johnson has commented about critiques of the novel, saying, "A greater volume of critical readings has been amassed by two legal scholars in law journals than by all the literary scholars in