The story “Dry September”, by William Faulkner is at its core, a story about ideology. Ideology, being defined as the “system of interlinked ideas, symbols, and beliefs by which a culture seeks to justify and perpetuate itself,”(Bercovitch 635) is the impetus behind all the action in “Dry September.” The beliefs and assumptions of the people in the town of Jefferson concerning race and gender turn a “rumor, story, whatever it was” into the lynching of the Negro, Will Mayes. Beyond the blatantly ideological actions of the ma ....