Overview
“Dry September” by William Faulkner is a powerful and disturbing story about racism, rumor, and mob violence in the American South. The story shows how an unconfirmed rumor about a white woman and a Black man leads to blind hatred, hysteria, and murder.
It takes place in Jefferson, Mississippi, during an unbearably hot and dry September, symbolizing the moral and emotional drought of the town — a place where compassion and justice have dried up completely.
Atmosphere and Symbolism of the Title
The town has had sixty-two rainless days, and the heat has made people restless and irritable. Faulkner uses this physical heat to mirror the moral heat of the townspeople — their anger, prejudice, and thirst for violence.
The title “Dry September” doesn’t only describe the weather — it represents dryness of heart, lack of humanity, and the barren souls of the people.
Main Characters
Will Mayes – A gentle, hardworking Black man who is falsely accused of assaulting a white woman.
Miss Minnie Cooper – A lonely, unmarried white woman in her late thirties who becomes the center of the rumor. Her loneliness and desperation make her seek attention, even through scandal.
John McLendon – A violent, racist ex-soldier who leads the mob that kills Will Mayes. He represents toxic masculinity and social hatred.
Hawkshaw (the Barber) – The only voice of reason. He defends Will Mayes and tries to stop the mob, but no one listens to him.
The Townsmen – Weak, ordinary white men who get swept into violence by peer pressure and prejudice.
Dry September Summary
Part I: The Rumor
The story opens in a barbershop filled with men talking about a rumor — that Miss Minnie Cooper has been attacked or insulted by a Black man named Will Mayes.
No one knows exactly what happened, but that doesn’t matter. The rumor spreads “like a fire in dry grass.”
Inside the barbershop, Hawkshaw, the barber, insists Will is innocent. He knows Will as a decent man. But the others, led by John McLendon, refuse to believe him. McLendon shouts that they must defend white womanhood and demands revenge immediately.
Despite Hawkshaw’s desperate warnings to “find out the facts first,” McLendon rallies the men to hunt down Will Mayes.
Part II: Minnie Cooper’s Life
Faulkner then shifts the focus to Minnie Cooper’s background.
She once was lively and popular in her youth, but as she grew older and remained unmarried, she became a social outcast. The town gossip turned against her, mocking her as an old maid.
Lonely and insecure, she lives with her sick mother and a strict aunt. Her days are empty, filled with meaningless errands and gossip. Her past relationship with a bank cashier (a widower) also ended, leaving her emotionally unstable.
By the time of the rumor, Minnie is a sad, isolated figure — starved for attention. This hints that she may have exaggerated or imagined the “attack” just to feel noticed again.
Part III: The Mob and the Murder
Hawkshaw tries to follow the mob and stop them, but he is too late.
McLendon and his men — including Butch and a few others — gather weapons and go looking for Will Mayes, who works as a night watchman at the ice plant. They find him there.
Will Mayes, frightened but respectful, insists he is innocent. He calls them “captains” and pleads for his life. But McLendon and the mob beat him, handcuff him, and drag him into a car.
Hawkshaw, horrified, jumps from the moving car before they reach their destination. The mob drives Will Mayes to an abandoned brick kiln — a dark, bottomless pit-like place that symbolizes death and racial hatred.
Faulkner never describes the killing directly — he leaves it to the reader’s imagination — but it’s clear that Will Mayes is lynched.
Part IV: Minnie’s Breakdown
The next evening, Minnie dresses up and goes out with her friends, who eagerly want her to describe the “attack.” She enjoys their attention, walking proudly through the town square.
People whisper as she passes, and the men remove their hats, calling her “the poor woman.” She feels admired for the first time in years.
At the movie theater, Minnie suddenly starts laughing uncontrollably, unable to stop. Her friends rush her out, whispering “Poor Minnie!”
Her laughter is chilling — it might mean guilt, shock, or even madness. Some readers think she realizes the terrible result of her rumor — that a man has been killed for her lie.
Part V: McLendon’s Return
That night, McLendon goes home after the killing. His house is neat and freshly painted, but inside it feels suffocating. He shouts at his wife and hits her. She is frightened and submissive.
He strips off his clothes, sweating heavily even at midnight, symbolizing his moral corruption and inner torment. He stands in the moonlight — a man consumed by hatred, unable to cool the heat of his guilt or his anger.
The story ends not with justice or truth, but with silence, heat, and moral emptiness — a portrait of a society destroyed by its own prejudice.
Themes and Meanings
Racism and Injustice:
The central theme — a Black man killed by white men without proof — shows the deep racial injustice of the Jim Crow South.The Power of Rumor:
A single unverified story spreads like wildfire and becomes a justification for murder.Loneliness and Gender:
Minnie’s isolation reflects the suffocating gender expectations of Southern women — marriage or madness are her only paths.Violence and Masculinity:
McLendon’s aggression shows how Southern manhood was built on dominance, control, and racial superiority.Moral Drought:
The “dry September” symbolizes the spiritual drought of humanity — a world where compassion has died.
Symbolism
Dryness / Heat: The absence of rain mirrors the town’s moral barrenness.
Sweat: McLendon’s endless sweating represents guilt, sin, and corruption.
The Fan: The barbershop fan that “stirs but does not freshen” symbolizes futile attempts to calm hatred.
Minnie’s Laughter: Madness, guilt, and self-deception — the psychological cost of lies.
The Brick Kiln: A dark pit of death, symbolizing the hell of racial hatred.
Life and Works of William Faulkner
1. Introduction
William Faulkner (1897–1962) is one of the greatest figures in 20th-century American literature and among the chief architects of the modern novel. His fiction explores the moral, historical, and psychological complexity of the American South, using rich, layered language and experimental narrative techniques.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1949), two Pulitzer Prizes (1955, 1963), and two National Book Awards, making him one of the most decorated writers in American history.
2. Early Life and Background
Full name: William Cuthbert Faulkner
Born: September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi
Died: July 6, 1962, in Byhalia, Mississippi
Faulkner grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, which became the model for his fictional county of Yoknapatawpha, the setting for most of his novels. He was descended from a family of Southern aristocrats whose fortunes had faded after the Civil War — a theme that would haunt his writing throughout his career.
He was deeply influenced by Southern history, family myths, and oral storytelling traditions, and his upbringing in the segregated South made him keenly aware of racial injustice and the decline of old Southern ideals.
3. Personality and Career
Faulkner was private, shy, and deeply introspective. He worked at odd jobs, including as a postmaster, and served briefly in the Royal Air Force during World War I (though he never saw combat). His life alternated between literary success and financial struggle.
Despite later fame, Faulkner preferred small-town life and once said, “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.”
He spent his later years teaching, writing screenplays for Hollywood (to earn money), and living on his farm, Rowan Oak, in Oxford.
4. Literary Career and Development
Early Work (1919–1928)
Faulkner’s early works show him searching for his voice.
The Marble Faun (1924) – his first book, a collection of poems influenced by Romanticism.
Soldiers’ Pay (1926) – his first novel, exploring the emotional scars of World War I.
Mosquitoes (1927) – a satirical novel about the artistic elite in New Orleans.
These works attracted modest attention, but it was his next phase that made literary history.
The Yoknapatawpha Saga (1929–1942)
Faulkner’s true genius emerged when he began setting his stories in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi. This mythical landscape became his version of James Joyce’s Dublin — a complete moral and social universe.
Key works in this period include:
The Sound and the Fury (1929) – A groundbreaking novel told through multiple perspectives and stream of consciousness. It captures the moral decay of the once-noble Compson family.
As I Lay Dying (1930) – A tragicomic story of a poor Southern family transporting their mother’s coffin across the countryside.
Sanctuary (1931) – A dark novel about corruption and violence, featuring the infamous character Temple Drake.
Light in August (1932) – A profound meditation on race, identity, and isolation in the modern South.
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) – Often considered his masterpiece, it reconstructs the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen, a man who tries to build a Southern dynasty through ruthless ambition.
This phase established Faulkner as the modern chronicler of the South’s tragic legacy — slavery, pride, guilt, and memory.
5. Themes and Style
Major Themes
The Decline of the Old South: The collapse of aristocratic families and the rise of a new, morally ambiguous world.
Race and Racial Guilt: The lasting trauma of slavery and the racial divide in Southern life.
Memory and Time: Faulkner’s characters often live in the past; time in his works is fluid, psychological, and cyclical.
Moral Conflict: Between pride and humility, illusion and truth, tradition and progress.
Isolation and Decay: Many of his characters are emotionally crippled by loneliness or moral corruption.
Narrative Style
Faulkner’s writing is known for:
Stream of consciousness – capturing thought as it occurs, fragmented and nonlinear.
Multiple narrators and shifting perspectives – offering subjective truth rather than objective fact.
Long, rhythmic sentences – often poetic and heavily punctuated.
Southern dialect and idiom – giving authenticity to his settings and voices.
He once said that his aim was “to tell about the human heart in conflict with itself,” which he considered the only thing truly worth writing about.
6. Later Works (1940s–1960s)
Faulkner’s later novels combine moral clarity with stylistic control.
Go Down, Moses (1942) – A collection of interlinked stories exploring race, nature, and legacy.
Intruder in the Dust (1948) – A moving novel about racial injustice and an innocent Black man falsely accused of murder (similar to Dry September in theme).
A Fable (1954) – A complex allegory about war and Christ-like sacrifice, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
The Reivers (1962) – His final novel, lighter in tone, also awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously.
7. The Nobel Prize and Legacy
In 1950, Faulkner delivered his Nobel Prize speech, one of the most celebrated in literary history. He spoke of the writer’s duty to remind humanity of “courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice.”
Faulkner’s influence is immense. Writers like Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, and Cormac McCarthy have drawn inspiration from his blend of myth, history, and moral insight.
Today, Faulkner stands beside Hemingway and Fitzgerald as one of the pillars of modern American fiction, but unlike them, his focus was not the urban or cosmopolitan world — it was the haunted soil of the South, a world decaying yet alive with moral intensity.
8. Conclusion
William Faulkner was not just a regional writer; he was a myth-maker of the human condition. Through his intricate language and layered narratives, he turned the local into the universal. His South — dry, guilty, and proud — becomes a mirror of all humanity struggling with time, memory, and conscience.
In his works, rain rarely falls easily, but when it does, it is the rain of grace — the long-awaited redemption of a parched soul.
Dry September Questions & Answers
Q1. Discuss the Themes of Polarization and Community Unrest in Faulkner’s Dry September.
William Faulkner’s “Dry September” is one of the most penetrating explorations of polarization and collective unrest in American literature. Set in the small town of Jefferson, Mississippi, during an oppressively hot, rainless September, the story depicts how rumor and racial hysteria divide a community, turning ordinary people into instruments of violence. Faulkner transforms the town itself into a psychological landscape of tension and decay — a living metaphor for a society crumbling under its own moral drought.
1. The Roots of Polarization: Rumor and Fear
The story begins not with action but with a rumor: “Through the bloody September twilight… it had gone like a fire in dry grass.”
This line sets the tone of contagion — gossip spreading as uncontrollably as wildfire. In Faulkner’s world, polarization begins with hearsay, not fact. The rumor that a Black man, Will Mayes, has attacked a white woman, Miss Minnie Cooper, becomes the spark that ignites the town’s buried racism.
No one knows what really happened, but uncertainty itself becomes intolerable. The townspeople fill the void of truth with their own prejudice. The barbershop scene, thick with heat and stale air, becomes a microcosm of communal division. The barber, Hawkshaw, pleads for reason, but his voice is drowned in a chorus of masculine outrage. Logic collapses under emotional contagion. What Faulkner shows is that unrest does not require oppression alone; it thrives on collective boredom, fear, and moral paralysis.
2. The Heat and the Crowd: A Symbol of Moral Drought
The town’s physical environment mirrors its psychological condition. After sixty-two rainless days, the air itself feels poisonous. The ceiling fan that “stirred but did not freshen” becomes a symbol of futile attempts to cool the fever of hatred. Faulkner’s description of the weather is not decorative; it is diagnostic. The suffocating dryness embodies the town’s spiritual desiccation — a place where empathy has evaporated.
This atmospheric tension gives rise to mob mentality. Men like John McLendon, the ex-soldier, exploit the heat and hysteria to assert dominance. Their violence is not just racial but existential — a way to prove power in a world that feels powerless. When McLendon shouts, “Are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman?” the question itself is not about justice but about restoring the illusion of control.
3. The Anatomy of a Divided Community
Faulkner constructs polarization not through ideology but through silence and complicity. The barber’s reasoned voice is isolated; the others either follow McLendon or remain passive. Polarization, in this sense, is not only the creation of the extremists but also of the silent majority that enables them. The community’s “unrest” is not rebellion against injustice but submission to fear and conformity.
Meanwhile, Minnie Cooper, the supposed victim, exists at the opposite end of this social divide. Her loneliness and psychological fragility reflect another form of unrest — the gendered despair of a woman rendered invisible in a patriarchal society. Her rumor functions as both a cry for attention and a symptom of repression. Faulkner thus links the town’s racial hatred to its sexual anxieties; both are products of social frustration and imbalance.
4. The Mob as Mirror of Society
The mob that kills Will Mayes is not an aberration but the town’s logical extension. Faulkner’s use of fragmented, breathless prose in the lynching scene — the dim faces, the dust, the “bowl of molten lead” — dissolves individuality. The men lose names and become one collective body, a moving organism of hate. The barber’s attempt to resist collapses as he, too, strikes Will Mayes in fear, proving that even decency can be corrupted under pressure.
The lynching itself, though not described directly, reverberates through the rest of the story. It contaminates everything that follows: Minnie’s manic laughter at the cinema, McLendon’s violence toward his wife, and the town’s uneasy silence. The unrest has not been resolved — it has simply been buried, like the body of Will Mayes, in the dark kiln of collective denial.
5. Polarization as a Psychological Condition
Faulkner does not portray polarization merely as racial conflict but as a disease of the human spirit. The townspeople’s moral confusion reflects a deeper fracture in American identity — a society that claims to value honor and justice while building its sense of order on exclusion and violence. The white men’s need to “protect” Minnie is less about morality than about maintaining their racial superiority. Their unity comes not from love or faith but from shared hatred.
The story ends not with rain but with silence — the dry air unbroken, the violence unresolved. Polarization, Faulkner suggests, is self-perpetuating: each act of brutality creates new wounds, new divisions, new rumors.
Conclusion
“Dry September” reveals how easily communities fracture when fear and prejudice replace reason. Faulkner portrays polarization not as a sudden eruption but as a slow drought of decency, in which empathy withers and lies take root. The town’s unrest is both literal and symbolic: a community consumed by heat, gossip, and guilt, unable to cleanse itself with the rain of truth. In the end, Jefferson becomes not just a Southern town but a timeless mirror of all societies that mistake unity for uniformity and justice for vengeance.
Q2. Discuss the Character of John McLendon in Dry September.
John McLendon, the leader of the lynch mob in “Dry September”, is one of William Faulkner’s most chilling portraits of moral decay. He embodies the violence, insecurity, and hypocrisy of the post–World War I South — a man who turns his personal frustration into social cruelty. Through McLendon, Faulkner examines how racism, masculinity, and emotional repression combine to create a monster shaped by his culture.
1. The Public Face: Heroism Turned to Hatred
McLendon enters the story dramatically — “His white shirt open at the throat; his hot, bold glance swept the group.” He is described as a war hero, decorated for valor in France. But this introduction is deeply ironic. The courage that once served his country has curdled into arrogance and rage. Faulkner contrasts the mythology of the Southern hero — disciplined, protective, noble — with McLendon’s reality: impulsive, violent, and morally bankrupt.
In the barbershop scene, his authority is instantaneous. He does not argue or persuade; he commands. His question — “Are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman?” — is not inquiry but incitement. McLendon thrives on binary oppositions: white/black, man/woman, power/weakness. His worldview admits no complexity, because complexity threatens control.
2. Violence as Identity
McLendon’s character is defined by a hunger for violence. The war has given him both the experience and appetite for aggression. His violence has no moral direction — it is a means of self-assertion in a society where his personal life feels meaningless. His sweating, his restless energy, his need to dominate — all are symptoms of an inner instability.
He channels this restlessness into racial hatred. Leading the mob gives him purpose and an illusion of leadership. In truth, McLendon’s aggression is not about protecting Miss Minnie Cooper but about protecting his own fragile masculinity. Faulkner’s subtle psychological irony lies here: McLendon’s war is not against Black men but against his own impotence — social, sexual, and emotional.
3. The Mob Leader and the Weak Man
Despite his outward strength, McLendon is a cowardly man who hides behind collective violence. He never faces Will Mayes alone; he relies on the mob’s anonymity. His authority depends on others’ fear and submission. When the barber resists him, McLendon’s fury flares precisely because he cannot tolerate dissent — it reminds him of his own insecurity.
Even during the killing, McLendon’s leadership is mechanical, not moral. He orders men about like soldiers, but the cause is hollow. The phrase “Not here — get him into the car” exposes his obsession with procedure rather than conscience. His military discipline masks moral chaos.
4. The Private Face: Domestic Tyrant
Faulkner’s final section strips McLendon of his public mask. When he returns home after the lynching, his supposed “heroism” collapses into pathetic domestic tyranny. His house is described as “trim and fresh as a birdcage” — an ironic image of captivity. He bullies his wife for waiting up, strikes her, and stands sweating in the moonlight like a man infected by his own violence.
Here Faulkner completes the psychological portrait: McLendon’s cruelty in public mirrors his cruelty at home. His hatred of Black people is inseparable from his hatred of women. Both are symptoms of the same disease — a fear of losing control. His endless sweating becomes a physical manifestation of guilt, lust, and corruption. The moonlight, cold and distant, watches over his failure to cool his burning rage.
5. McLendon as Symbol of the Diseased South
McLendon is more than a character; he is a symbol of a society built on repression and violence. He represents the South’s desperate attempt to preserve its sense of superiority after the trauma of war and social change. His racism disguises deeper anxieties: the loss of economic power, the decline of patriarchal order, the rise of modern uncertainty.
Faulkner does not justify McLendon — he exposes him. The man who once fought for freedom now destroys it; the man who claims to defend honor desecrates it. His “heroism” is a grotesque parody of Southern chivalry.
Conclusion
John McLendon’s character is the moral core of “Dry September” — not because he possesses morality, but because his corruption reveals the truth of his society. He is a man without rain, without renewal, living in a perpetual drought of the soul. His violence springs not from strength but from emptiness. When he stands sweating in the moonlight at the story’s end, Faulkner leaves us with an image of desolation: a man imprisoned in his own heat, unable to cool the fever of hatred he helped unleash. McLendon is not just the killer of Will Mayes; he is the product and prisoner of a community that has lost the capacity for compassion.
Q3. Discuss the Character of Minnie Cooper in Faulkner’s Dry September.
Minnie Cooper stands at the haunting center of William Faulkner’s Dry September — not as an active character, but as a symbolic void around which the story’s violence revolves. She says almost nothing, yet her name alone unleashes the mob’s fury. Through Minnie, Faulkner examines how gender, loneliness, and social repression can deform both personal identity and public morality. She is at once victim and catalyst, pitiable and destructive, the “dry” woman at the heart of a “dry” community.
1. The Woman at the Center of a Rumor
The story begins with the line: “Through the bloody September twilight… it had gone like a fire in dry grass — the rumor, the story, whatever it was.”
This “whatever it was” captures Minnie’s place in the town’s imagination. No one knows what happened between her and Will Mayes — or whether anything happened at all — but that uncertainty becomes the spark for hysteria. Minnie exists less as a person than as a pretext, a vessel into which the town pours its racial and sexual anxieties.
The men in the barbershop speak of her not as a human being but as a symbol of “white womanhood.” Their language reduces her to property, an emblem of purity to be defended, rather than a woman with her own truth. This very abstraction — the transformation of Minnie into an “idea” — is what enables violence. She becomes the “honor” that must be avenged, even if the facts are unknown.
2. The “Old Maid” and the Weight of Loneliness
In the second section, Faulkner unveils Minnie’s life before the rumor. She is thirty-eight or thirty-nine, living with her invalid mother and a domineering aunt. Once a lively and attractive girl, she has now faded into a socially invisible figure, surviving on gossip, nostalgia, and repetition. The narrator’s tone is sympathetic but unsparing: she is a woman who has become “a bright, haggard mask,” trapped in the memory of her youth.
Her unmarried status carries immense social stigma in the conservative Southern town of Jefferson. In a culture that defines women only by marriage and motherhood, Minnie’s singleness is treated as moral failure. Even her former romance with the bank cashier becomes town gossip, a source of shame rather than joy. She is caught between two impossible roles — the “pure” woman who must remain untouched, and the “fallen” woman whose loneliness invites suspicion. Faulkner captures this tragic bind with cruel precision: Minnie’s sexuality, long suppressed, festers into a desperate need for attention.
3. Psychological Breakdown and the Need to Be Seen
When the rumor of her assault spreads, Minnie becomes, for the first time in years, visible. The community that once ignored her now centers its moral theater upon her name. The attention, though born of pity and prejudice, gives her a distorted sense of validation. Her trembling, her “feverish” preparation for the evening outing, and her manic laughter in the cinema are symptoms of psychological collapse — the eruption of long-repressed desire and guilt.
Critically, Faulkner does not confirm whether Minnie intentionally lied or genuinely believed she was attacked. He keeps her interior life ambiguous, forcing readers to confront how social narratives create reality. Minnie’s breakdown reflects not deliberate deceit but the madness bred by isolation. Her laughter at the movie theater — uncontrollable, hysterical — is the story’s emotional climax. It is not joy, but the sound of disintegration: the laughter of someone who can no longer distinguish illusion from truth.
4. Minnie as Symbol: Gender and Power
Minnie is more than an individual; she is the symbolic “white woman” of Southern mythology — the figure upon whose supposed fragility the entire racial hierarchy depends. In the culture of the Jim Crow South, white female purity was treated as sacred, and the imagined threat of the Black male body was used to justify endless acts of violence. Minnie thus becomes an idol of the South’s moral hypocrisy: worshiped publicly, imprisoned privately.
At the same time, Faulkner subtly portrays her complicity. Her rumor — whether conscious or unconscious — becomes a weapon. It restores her social significance at the cost of another’s life. Her femininity is not empowerment but tragic performance, the only form of agency left to a woman whom society has silenced.
5. The Dryness of the Soul
The story’s title finds its psychological echo in Minnie. She is a “dry woman in a dry town.” Her life, parched of love and purpose, mirrors the drought that suffocates Jefferson. Her laughter, shrill and endless, is the only “rain” the story receives — a false, feverish release that changes nothing.
Conclusion
Minnie Cooper is both symptom and cause of Jefferson’s disease. Through her, Faulkner portrays the intersection of gender and race, repression and hysteria. She is not merely a liar or victim, but a tragic creation of her culture — a woman who turns her own emptiness into catastrophe. Her laughter at the story’s end is unforgettable: the broken music of a soul crushed by loneliness and inflated by myth. In Minnie’s hollow eyes, Faulkner makes us glimpse the human cost of a world that defines purity without mercy, and womanhood without choice.
Q4. Analyze the “White Goddess” Concept Reflected in the Conversations Throughout Dry September.
William Faulkner’s “Dry September” dramatizes not only racial violence but also the mythology that sustains it. At the heart of the story lies the Southern cult of the “White Goddess” — the idealization of white womanhood as pure, fragile, and sacred. This myth, drawn from both patriarchal and racial ideology, turns women like Minnie Cooper into symbols rather than individuals. Through the conversations in the barbershop and throughout the town, Faulkner exposes how this worship of purity becomes the moral excuse for brutality.
1. The Myth of Purity and Protection
The “White Goddess” is not a divine figure in Faulkner’s story, but a social construct — a sanctified image of white femininity that must be protected at all costs. In the segregated South, this myth served a political function: it justified the subjugation of both women and Black men. The barbershop debate early in the story becomes the ritual space where this mythology is rehearsed.
When McLendon storms in shouting, “Are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman?”, he transforms Minnie into an abstract emblem of purity. Her individuality — her age, her loneliness, her humanity — disappears. The men’s outrage is not about her suffering but about the symbolic defilement of whiteness. The “White Goddess” myth demands not compassion, but vengeance.
2. The Barbershop as Ritual Theater
Faulkner stages the barbershop as a microcosm of Southern patriarchy. The ceiling fan turns without freshening the air — a symbol of circular, stale thinking. The men perform their masculinity through verbal violence, competing in displays of loyalty to the myth of white womanhood. The barber, Hawkshaw, who urges reason, is branded a “niggerlover,” because to question the purity of the White Goddess is to commit heresy.
Their conversation mirrors a religious ceremony. McLendon plays the role of high priest, invoking the goddess’s honor; the others, initially hesitant, are converted by the fervor of his rhetoric. The story becomes a modern-day rite of sacrifice, with Will Mayes as the victim offered on the altar of white femininity. The men’s worship of the “goddess” thus masks their worship of power — the right to dominate and punish.
3. The White Goddess and the Fear of Desire
Underlying the idealization of purity is a deep fear of female sexuality. The myth of the White Goddess requires that women remain untouchable, and that any hint of desire be projected onto the racial “other.” In this way, the Black man becomes the scapegoat for the community’s repressed eroticism.
Minnie’s imagined “attack” by Will Mayes exposes the instability of this myth. She is not a young virgin but an aging woman whose body and desires have long been denied social legitimacy. Her accusation — or the rumor of it — can be read as the eruption of suppressed longing, a rebellion against the myth that demands her chastity. Yet once the rumor spreads, she is forced back into the role of victim, her agency erased. The goddess must remain pure, even at the cost of another’s life.
4. Race, Gender, and Violence
The myth of the White Goddess fuses racial and gender hierarchies into one ideology. White men define their honor by their ability to “protect” white women, while simultaneously denying those women independence. The protection they offer is possessive, not empathetic. McLendon’s cry of defense is really an assertion of ownership: he defends not Minnie but his right to control her image.
This dynamic culminates in the lynching of Will Mayes — a ritual act that reaffirms the community’s racial hierarchy. By killing the Black man, the white mob restores the illusion of the goddess’s purity and their own dominance. Yet the act is hollow. When McLendon returns home, he strikes his wife and sweats in guilt — a symbolic collapse of the myth. The “White Goddess” has not purified him; she has cursed him.
5. Minnie Cooper: The Fallen Goddess
Minnie herself embodies the tragic paradox of this myth. Once the rumor spreads, she becomes both saint and scapegoat. The town women treat her with a mix of awe and gossip, whispering, “Poor Minnie!” Her hysteria at the cinema — her laughter that turns into screaming — marks the disintegration of the goddess image. She has become what the myth forbids: a woman whose emotions, desires, and body refuse to stay sacred.
Conclusion
The conversations throughout Dry September are not casual talk but ritual recitations of belief — belief in whiteness, masculinity, and purity as absolute truths. Faulkner’s genius lies in showing how these myths destroy everyone involved. The White Goddess is not divine but devouring: she consumes Will Mayes, she consumes Minnie, and she consumes McLendon himself. Beneath the rhetoric of honor lies fear — fear of the female body, fear of equality, fear of truth. The “White Goddess,” in Faulkner’s world, is the cruelest idol of all: worshiped in words, defended by blood, and ultimately hollow, like the dry September air in which no life can grow.
Q5. Analyze the Title of the Story Dry September.
William Faulkner’s title “Dry September” seems deceptively simple — an observation about the weather — yet it holds within it the entire emotional and moral climate of the story. In Faulkner’s hands, dryness becomes more than a meteorological condition; it becomes a metaphor for spiritual barrenness, social decay, and moral paralysis. The oppressive heat and lack of rain mirror the moral drought of the town of Jefferson, where hatred grows unchecked, compassion evaporates, and rumor replaces truth.
1. Literal Dryness: The Heat That Breeds Madness
The story begins with the line: “Through the bloody September twilight, after the summer without rain, the air was dry and lifeless.”
From the first sentence, Faulkner turns weather into mood. The town has not seen rain in sixty-two days. The heat is not only physical; it is psychological — it seethes, suffocates, and drives people to frenzy. The barbershop scene unfolds in an airless room, with a ceiling fan that “stirred without freshening the air.” The suffocating stillness becomes the breeding ground for rumor and violence.
Faulkner’s setting is precise: it is September — a month of transition, when summer refuses to end and autumn cannot yet begin. The town is trapped between seasons, just as its people are trapped between reason and rage. The heat acts as a catalyst, intensifying buried prejudices. The dryness of the world parallels the dryness of human empathy, and it is within this vacuum that evil takes root.
2. Moral and Emotional Drought
The title “Dry September” also conveys the moral drought of Jefferson — a community drained of conscience and compassion. The townsmen speak with righteous fury about “protecting white womanhood,” yet not one of them questions whether the accusation is true. Their hearts, like the earth, have hardened.
The story’s dryness is not merely physical but spiritual. There is no rain because there is no renewal, no washing away of corruption. The town has become an ecosystem of suspicion, where truth cannot grow. The rumor of Minnie Cooper’s assault spreads “like a fire in dry grass” — the simile captures both the swiftness and destructiveness of collective hysteria. In a world where moisture — the symbol of life — is absent, destruction becomes the only form of vitality left.
3. Dryness as Symbol of Sterility and Repression
The title also resonates with the personal dryness of the story’s central figures. Minnie Cooper, the unmarried woman at the center of the rumor, lives a sterile, loveless existence. Her emotional life is arid; her body and spirit are deprived of affection. She represents the social and sexual repression of Southern womanhood — a “dry” femininity that seeks expression through hysteria and illusion. Her laughter at the cinema is not joy but madness, the sound of drought cracking under pressure.
Similarly, John McLendon’s life is a study in aridity. His energy, once used in war, now burns destructively. His violence is not fueled by passion but by emptiness. When he returns home after the lynching, his house is “trim and fresh as a birdcage” — a sterile domestic space that mirrors his barren soul. He sweats uncontrollably, as though his body tries to purge the heat of guilt that his mind refuses to acknowledge.
4. Social and Historical Dryness
Faulkner’s choice of title also reflects the social drought of the American South during the Jim Crow era — a world parched of justice and equality. The absence of rain becomes a metaphor for the absence of moral nourishment in a society built on racial hierarchy. The white townsmen’s violence is the only form of emotional release available to them in a stagnant world. Their hysteria is the thunderstorm that never comes — thunder without cleansing rain.
Even the structure of the story mirrors this drought. Faulkner withholds catharsis. The lynching happens offstage; there is no moral resolution, no rain at the end to cool the heat. The dryness continues unbroken, like an eternal season of guilt.
5. The Unending Drought: A Symbol of American Conscience
On a larger symbolic level, “Dry September” stands for the permanent drought of the American conscience. Faulkner’s story exposes how the myth of Southern purity — the worship of the “white woman” and the demonization of the Black man — has drained the nation of empathy. The dryness is historical: it is the residue of centuries of slavery and racial fear.
The title’s beauty lies in its restraint. Faulkner does not name the violence directly; he names the condition that allows it. “Dry September” is not only the setting of one murder but a metaphor for all moments when a community, parched of truth, chooses hatred as its rain.
Conclusion
Faulkner’s title is both literal and prophetic. “Dry September” captures a landscape and a moral atmosphere where thirst — for justice, for love, for meaning — goes unsatisfied. The drought is physical, emotional, and spiritual; it devours both victim and perpetrator. When the story ends, no storm comes, no repentance follows. The silence remains, heavy and airless. In that silence, Faulkner leaves us with an unforgettable truth: that the real tragedy of the South — and of humanity — is not the heat of its passions, but the dryness of its heart.
Q6. Sketch the Character of Hawkshaw in Dry September.
Among the violent, feverish voices of Faulkner’s Dry September, the barber Hawkshaw stands as the sole figure of sanity — a man who resists the mob’s hysteria and defends reason against madness. Though often overlooked beside the ferocity of John McLendon or the pathos of Minnie Cooper, Hawkshaw embodies Faulkner’s moral center: the voice of conscience trapped in a community gone dry.
1. The Ordinary Man as Moral Witness
Faulkner introduces Hawkshaw in the story’s opening scene, set in a barbershop thick with tension. While the other men rage about the supposed assault, Hawkshaw insists calmly, “Nobody knows yet what happened. We ought to find out first.” His reasonableness, however, marks him as an outsider in a world that no longer values truth. The men dismiss him as a coward and call him “niggerlover” — a word that exposes their fear more than his weakness.
Hawkshaw’s realism contrasts sharply with the others’ hysteria. He does not speak the language of honor or race; he speaks the language of fact. In the overheated barbershop, he is the only one trying to bring “air” — literal and moral — into the suffocating room. Yet Faulkner does not make him heroic in the traditional sense. Hawkshaw is an everyman, vulnerable, uncertain, and finally powerless. His decency lies not in triumph but in the attempt to think clearly amid confusion.
2. The Barber as Symbol of Cleansing
The choice of occupation is significant. As a barber, Hawkshaw is associated with cleaning, grooming, and order — small acts of renewal. His shop is a place where men come to refresh themselves, but on this day, even that space becomes infected with the heat of rumor. The ceiling fan “stirred but did not freshen the air,” suggesting that Hawkshaw’s efforts at moral cleansing are futile in a corrupt environment.
The barber’s chair becomes a silent witness to the transformation of civilized men into a mob. Hawkshaw’s calm, repetitive actions — wiping a razor, brushing hair — symbolize a fragile normality that collapses under the weight of collective madness.
3. The Lonely Defender of Justice
When McLendon and the others leave to find Will Mayes, Hawkshaw follows them, driven by conscience and helpless hope. But even his resistance falters. He rides with the mob, protests feebly, and finally jumps from the moving car — unable to stop the violence yet unwilling to participate. His gesture is tragic precisely because it fails.
Hawkshaw’s humanity isolates him. He is not a reformer or a crusader, only a decent man who feels trapped between fear and duty. His withdrawal from the mob marks both moral clarity and impotence. Faulkner’s genius lies in showing that goodness, in such a society, is not rewarded; it is suffocated. Hawkshaw’s escape from the car is also an escape from the collective conscience — a symbolic refusal to descend into the moral kiln where Will Mayes will die.
4. A Voice of Reason in a World Without Listeners
Throughout the story, Hawkshaw represents the possibility of rational dialogue, but his voice is swallowed by noise. In a community where emotion replaces evidence, where masculinity is measured by violence, the thoughtful man becomes irrelevant. His defeat is the story’s quiet tragedy. Faulkner does not condemn him for failing to act more decisively; he shows that individual morality has little power against institutional hatred.
Hawkshaw’s silence after the murder speaks volumes. He knows the truth — that a man has been killed for a lie — but he cannot speak it aloud. His conscience becomes his burden, a private drought of guilt that mirrors the town’s public one.
5. Hawkshaw and the Theme of Dryness
In the symbolic geography of Dry September, Hawkshaw represents the last trace of moisture in an arid world — the remnant of empathy and reason. But even he cannot make it rain. His presence only highlights the community’s barrenness. The fan that moves without cooling, the stale air he breathes, the words he cannot utter — all point to a moral exhaustion that overwhelms him.
He is not a failed hero but a tragic witness, condemned to see what others refuse to see. His decency survives, but it achieves nothing. Yet in Faulkner’s moral universe, even that survival matters: it preserves the memory that goodness once existed, however faintly, in the heat of cruelty.
Conclusion
Hawkshaw in Dry September is Faulkner’s quiet moral compass — a simple man whose decency cannot stop evil but still gives the story its humanity. In a world where men worship violence and myths of honor, Hawkshaw stands for truth, modest and unglamorous. His small act of refusal — jumping from the car — is both defeat and dignity. Through him, Faulkner reminds us that the tragedy of the South, and of all societies in moral drought, lies not only in its cruelty but in the silence of those who still know what rain should feel like.
