But the Days Grow Short: A Reinterpretation of Faulkner's "Dry September"

Abstract

Dry September is one of Faulkner's best known and most characteristic stories. Even among readers who otherwise know little of Faulkner's work, many seem to know story where the black guy rapes the ole white woman and gets lynched. It did not happen this way, of course, but that is frequently how the tale is rememberedperhaps readers are more taken by the story's rumor and sensationalism than they would like to admit. Among Faulkner critics, however, William Van O'Connor is representative of the regular approach to the tale when he refers to it as story of the wretchedness, the sadism, and the shame of a man who has helped to lynch a Negro.1 Such interpretations tend to make McLendon the central character and downplay the story's equal emphasis upon Miss Minnie Cooper and the barber, Hawkshaw Stribling. Other interpretations, such as the well-known one by John Vickery on scapegoats and ritual,2 are interesting, but emphasize peripheral issues that Faulkner would have considered of secondary importance. Still others, respecting the title, place nearly total emphasis on the Fahrenheit reading and have the heat deterministically responsible for most of what occurs. What is needed at this point, I think, is a reinterpretation which reassesses the title's meaning and acknowledges the equal importance of three main characters rather than just one. So many Faulkner titles verge on the gratuitous that we sometimes fail to recognize what a pointed one means-and in this case such failure of recognition garbles the interpretation of the story itself. When Cleanth Brooks finally reprimanded Faulkner critics in 1963 that