William Faulkner, as a Southern American author, writes about prejudices of his own regional culture. In his short stories he created spectacular characters who had well defined personalities, thus Dry September is not the exception.
Faulkner's short story Dry September shows how prejudice can influence the way people act. Actually, the story is based on the violence that surrounds the place when Miss Minnie Cooper declared that she was attacked. Although the story is about the killing of a man named Will Mayes, the actual fact that the men had killed Mayes is not explicitly explained in the story in order to keep the reader focused on the violence that men showed against the Negro Mayes, despite the fact that they did not have real evidence that he was the one who attacked Miss Minnie Cooper. Thus, the central point is how mankind can do justice when they are influenced by prejudices.
Therefore, white men allowed them to tell "white lies" when referring to insignificant topics, but the Southern lady was not expected to lie and even though men knew she could be lying, they did not face the problem. Besides, the fact that men had to protect women irrespective of lying or not gave way to violence.
To conclude, it is well known that Faulkner's writing style is present in his short stories, however his style differ considerably from the one used in his narrative, for instance, stream of consciousness is replaced by the usage of extended descriptions and details. Moreover, the way the author treats his characters as victims of different societal forces is what involves the reader on the story. In this case, Will Mayes is victim of prejudice for belonging to a different race.
As a final question for you to think about it: Can we do justice based on prejudices? Have you ever criticised someone without knowing him/her?
Melanie,I really like your post since it also caught my attention the level of violence in the short story based on a prejudice and I personally believe that in fact that was what Faulkner was trying to point out: the violence in that context, since in one way or another their characters are all victims of violence, specially Will Mayes due to the fact that he was murdered for no real reason since the murder was based on the lie told by Miss Minnie Copper, because she tought that by telling that she was raped she would demonstrate to the other people that she was still desired. Unfortunately, in that given context and because of the idea of honor and White Goddess, the lie told by her wasn't questioned by anyone except the baber, who knew Mayes.
ResponderEliminarFinally I strongly believe that we cannot do that severes and major accusations based on something that hasn't been proved, since you're not guilty until the opposite is proved. For the other part of your question I have to be honest and admit that although I'm not feel proud about it, I have misjudged people based on nothing more than a prejudice, but I haven't done anything as serious as hurting people or something like that.
In a nutshell, and with no intention of generalize, I think us, as human beings, tend to misjudge, do things based on prejudices, and that sort of things, it's really hard to find someone that in his/her entirely life hasn't done this.