Dry September Themes

"Dry September" is suffused with violence. Much of the violence is rumored, hinted at or implied. It is left to the reader to decide what may have occurred. The explicit violence in the text, the i...

For some of the characters in "Dry September," a story set in post-slavery, pre-Civil Rights Mississippi, life is black and white. For such characters, most notably John McLendon, contact between b...

"Dry September" shows us a late 1920s or early 1930s Mississippi town breaking under the weight of its outmoded social and class structures. In the days of slavery, the landowner with the biggest p...

"Dry September" focuses on the kidnapping and likely murder of Will Mayes, a black man in a Mississippi town, when he is connected sexually (by way of rumor) to a white woman. The story features a...

While the narrator of "Dry September" is reserved in terms of commentary, the characters are not. Most of the dialogue is disturbing, and uncomfortable to read. Racial slurs that would be unaccepta...