Assignment for 10/14 - Faulkner

“Dry September” for a title already sets the story on edge. Something is going to be wrong there. The weather is held complicit in the action. “Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass---the rumor, the story, whatever it was.” Maybe if there had been a little rain, this construction suggests, everyone might have been a little more circumspect about the whole thing. The “bloody September twilight” is the “aftermath of sixty-two rainless days.” Not the aftermath of an action, however slight or misunderstood, but the aftermath of two months of hot, dry weather.

Miss Minnie Cooper is the character the story hangs on. Whatever she said about Will Mayes, no matter how innocuous it was, started the trouble. She is not desirable to the men in her town, and hasn’t been for years. “...the sitting and lounging men did not even follow her with their eyes any more.” This is also not the first time she said something about unwanted attention from a man. “‘Did it really happen’ a third said. ‘This ain’t the first man scare she ever had, like Hawkshaw says. Wasn’t there something about a man on the kitchen roof, watching her undress, about a year ago?’” She is not considered reliable by the men in town, but when her accusation is against a black man, they can’t help but believe her. If they didn’t, they would have to take Will Mayes’ word against hers. The women do not consider her that reliable, either. “Then to one another: ‘Do you suppose anything really happened?’ their eyes darkly aglitter, secret and passionate. ‘Shhhhhhhhhh! Poor girl! Poor Minnie!’” They are pitying her not only for what might have happened, (and probably didn’t) but also for the lengths she went to.

So, Minnie desperately wants attention. To get it, she says/does/alludes to something Will Mayes said/did/alluded to, and gets him, if not killed, than very thoroughly incapacitated. This the sickening effect of actually getting her sexual attention from the men in her community. “Then the drug store, where even the young men lounging in the door-way tipped their hats and followed with their eyes the motion of her hips and legs when she passed.” She has set herself up as a desired woman by the most forbidden of people, and the one who will be least likely believed when he says that nothing happened at all. She is the one with the power when she lassos Will Mayes into her desperate bid for attention. This may be the only interaction with a man where she has had the power in her entire life. Minnie is left screaming to herself, as the other women comfort her even while they check her hair for signs of age.

At the end of the story, no one is left thinking they did the right thing. There is no redemption, and there will be none. Faulkner sees to that in the final sentences, when he describes John McLendon at night, after he has returned home. “At last he found it and wiped his body again, and, with his body pressed against the dusty screen, he stood panting. There was no movement, no sound, not even an insect. The dark world seemed to like stricken beneath the cold moon and the lidless stars.” In the silence, McLendon’s panting makes him the animal, trapped inside his house and inside the actions he took. The world is “stricken,” as if unable to believe or bear what has happened. The stars have no lids. They are open, though it seems they should be shut. Nothing is right.