The Physical Atmosphere in Faulkner’s Dry September :: Faulkner’s Dry September Essays

The Physical Atmosphere in Faulkners Dry SeptemberAn anonymous protagonist in the barbershop at the inception of Dry September makes one of the key statements in the short story Its this durn stomach. . . Its enough to make a part do anything (170). The patron sees the heat and drought as having possibly driven a black man to attack or offend a white woman. The idea that the weather has an effect on the townspeople is echoed at the end of the story when McLendons wife says, I couldnt sleep. . .The heat something (182). In both examples, the climactic conditions and extraneous environment are seen as affecting the town d salubriousers behavior. The physical atmosphere, however, seems to be more a reflection of the emotional atmosphere of the townspeople than the cause of their agitation, as the barbershop patron would have us believe. In particular, the dust that pervades the story can be seen as a reflection of the dried-up, monotonous, and lonely existence of Minnie Cooper. She lives with two venerable women, her sick m different and her sallow, unflagging aunt, and Minnies days are typically filled with nothing more than eating, napping, and going to shops in town to meet with other women haggling over prices for the fun of it (173). Minnie does not even have genuine friendships to enliven her idle and empty or dry and dusty days (175). sooner of establishing a female camaraderie between characters, Faulkner portrays relations between women as marked by tension and dissimulation one of those bitter inexplicable (to the man mind) amicable enmities which occur between women (156, Absalom, Absalom). As Minnies presumed friends during girlhood become women, they take pleasure in the fact that Minnies transition to womanhood label the end of her days as a social butterfly Faulkner calls it the pleasure of retaliation (174). The neighbors she visits on Christmas, women friends most likely, revel in the opportunity to tell her of how well her former love-inte rest is doing without her in Memphis, watching with bright, secret eyes her haggard bright face (175). When Minnie is having a fit of uncontrollable laughter at the end, the women she is with act concerned and kind, smoothing her hair and saying poor girl to her, but this is shown to be dissimulationthey smooth her hair, not to comfort her, but to look for signs of graying, and between the expressions of compassion speak in Minnies hearing, they speculate furtively over the veracity of her claim (182).