Racism In William Faulkner's Dry September

People within a racist society are not to be taken seriously because their actions and thoughts have all stemmed from illegitimate ideas of superiority of races that have been instilled in their minds since birth. William Faulkner uses underlying meaning while describing characters’ physical appearances to further push forward this argument in a short story, “Dry September”, within his book Collected Stories. By putting his readers in a situation where they experience what is happening in the text first hand, Faulkner exemplifies how excluded the rest of the people in the town feel. This forces readers, much like the townspeople, to decide how they perceive the situation. They each make decisions based on what they have always been told, or

Will Mayes was kidnapped and shoved into a car with a group of rageful men and a barber. Faulkner writes about their racist actions, “The soldier leaned across the Negro and grasped at him, but he had already jumped. The car went on without checking speed” (179). By using “The soldier” as the subject Faulkner implies that he is the one doing the action, and “the Negro”, Mayes, is the direct object. Therefore, once the man doing the actions, “the soldier”, grasps for Mayes he, meaning Mayes, has already jumped out. In fact, this incident occurred while a car was going full speed, leading to a hard impact on the fall. Faulkner describes the force that the speed had, “The impetus hurled him crashing through dust-sheathed weeds...Dust puffed about him, and in a thin, vicious crackling of spless stems he lay choking and retching until the second car passed and died away” (179). By using these egressive verbs, Faulkner implies that Mayes could not withstand the impact and died. The Barber “limped” back into town later in the text, however, Mayes has no actions after this event in the story. The barber and Mayes both fall out of the moving car, however, only the barber gets back up, proving Mayes’ inability to move due to his death. Additionally, Mayes is covered in dust, and stayed that way for the rest of the time implying that he is lying in his coffin after being ejected from the car. Moreover, the dust “puffed about him” meaning that he and the dust have become one at this point. He does not have any action whatsoever, because if he did the dust would have fallen off of him. The dust has not moved at all to such an extent that now the dust incorporated into his identity, showing that he has faded away into a motionless, unliving,