William Faulkner claimed he was trying to fit the whole world between the capital letter at the beginning and the period at the end of a sentence, and that"s why his sentences tended to be so long. In the very first sentence of his short story "Dry September," he manages to establish the beginning of a world, its dark mood, and point the reader in the direction of the story"s theme.

             "Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of 62 rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass - the rumor, the story, whatever it was." A specific moment is captured here: twilight, the time when daylight gives way to darkness, in September, the end of summer as winter approaches - and how that moment feels: bloody, dry. A sense of urgency is already conveyed in his image of "a fire in dry grass," a sense of something out of control and moving fast. And the "it" that was moving so rapidly is the rumor.

             "Dry September" studies the awful result of rumor, ignorant gossip, storytelling; at bottom it is a study of racism, plain and complex. Even our hero the barber is powerless to stop the angry flow of mob rule as the men in his shop decide to take action on the rumor themselves. "Few (novels) are more charged with destiny weighing heavily over them than those of Faulkner. We have the impression of characters irretrievably choked by fate." (Pouillon, p. 79).

             The mob operates on hearsay, ignoring the testimony of the barber who claims "I know Will Mayes. He"s a good nigger," calling the barber a "nigger lover," "one hell of a white man." Banter and accusations are thrown back and forth around the barber shop, the clients all lathered up, the barber poised with his razor above them, and build to a pitch of action when McClendon shows up and says, "Well, are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman on the streets of Jefferson?" as if the rumor were fact and he"s the one can prove it.