Faulkner's family lived during the prosperous decades of Mississippi. However, after the war broke out, they went through a very critical time. Faulkner meditated on the story of his family, as well as on his own, and made use of it to create his fiction.

"Dry September" is a story in which he deals with very polemic issues, such as racism, violence, and the position of women in society. This story opens our eyes to several problems that affect our society, as well as to the question of prejudice, which is inherent in all human beings.

The story revolves around a rumor that a black man called Will Mayes had raped Miss Minnie Cooper - a white unmarried woman in her late thirties: "... it had gone like a fire in dry grass - the rumor, the story, whatever it was.". As Jefferson is a small town, rumors fly like fire in a dry field.

The conflict is presented to us at the very b

Women were expected to marry, and when they did not, something suspicious was thought to be going on. Single women were rejected by society and subject to all sorts of malicious gossip. When Minnie Cooper is seen with the widower cashier, for example, the townspeople simply assume that she is having an adulterous affair, despite the lack of evidence.

McLendon's behavior also causes us to reflect on how hypocritical our society is. He feels he has the right to punish Will Mayes for having attacked Minnie Cooper, yet at the end of the story he strikes his wife for an absurd reason. Through this scene, Faulkner illustrates the helplessness and vulnerability of women in the male-dominated Southern society.

In the denouement, we find out that the furious white men lynched Will Mayes, and left him somewhere out of town to die. The violence of the lynching scene is shocking. Will Mayes is completely defenseless. He can be compared to game that had been trapped by a group of hunters. Had Will Mayes not been murdered, the story would have had a completely different meaning.

It is important to stress that in "Dry September" the significant revelation comes only to the readers. After Will´s murder nothing changes in Jefferson or any of the characters. Yet, anyone who finishes reading this short story is surely left with several questions to ponder on.

The air in the town is described as "vitiated", which means "corrupt"/"degraded"/"perverted". With this description, the author is criticizing the mentality of the citizens in Jefferson. The idea that the white men in town decide to lynch a black man without even bothering to investigate whether he is actually guilty triggers a lot of indignation on the readers, but that is how things happened in the South of the United States at the time. Slavery had just been abolished, and white people were having a very hard time accepting this new reality. Racism was taken to its ultimate consequences. The truth is that the abolition of slavery in the country did not make black people's lives any better. The social, economical and political segregation remained, leading to serious racial conflicts that last until the present day.

One of the barbers tries to calm the angry men down and to convince them that Will Mayes is incapable of doing such a terribl

Some common words found in the essay are:
Minnie Cooper, Dry September, September Jefferson, Civil War/, United Slavery, Oxford Mississippi, World War, minnie cooper, Northern Mississippi, William Faulkner's, dry september, fire dry, affect society, , fire dry grass, causes reflect, rainless days, sixty-two rainless, rape story, society subject, southern society, gone fire dry, sixty-two rainless days, miss minnie cooper,
Approximate Word count = 1556
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)