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

The Physical Atmosphere in Faulkners Dry SeptemberAn unknown patron in the barbershop at the beginning of Dry September makes virtuoso of the key statements in the short report card Its this durn weather. . . Its plentiful to make a man do anything (170). The patron sees the heat and drought as having possibly driven a black man to onslaught or off balance a white woman. The idea that the weather has an gear up on the townspeople is echoed at the end of the story when McLendons married woman says, I couldnt sleep. . .The heat something (182). In both examples, the clim turn of eventsic conditions and out-of-door environment are seen as affecting the town d easyers behavior. The physical atmosphere, however, seems to be more a reflection of the emotional atmosphere of the townspeople than the cook 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, mo nononous, and lone ly humans of Minnie Cooper. She lives with two old women, her sick mother and her sallow, unflagging aunt, and Minnies years are typically filled with nothing more than eating, napping, and going to shops in town to meet with other women haggling oer 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). Instead of establishing a female comradeliness in the midst of characters, Faulkner portrays relations between women as marked by tenseness and dissimulation one of those bitter inexplicable (to the man mind) amicable enmities which pass by between women (156, Absalom, Absalom). As Minnies presumed friends during girlhood become women, they take pastime in the fact that Minnies transition to womanhood marks the end of her days as a social butterfly Faulkner calls it the pleasure of vengeance (174). The neighbors she visits on Christmas, women friends most likely, revel in the opportunity to tel l her of how well her former love-interest is doing without her in Memphis, watching with sparkly, 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 solicitous 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 spoken in Minnies hearing, they speculate furtively over the veracity of her claim (182).