He spins the story between two ledges, Ms. Minnie and the barber. That is, between these two characters, the two halves of the story come together. Minnie's side probably could've been done without--the barber's experience is awful enough on its own and readers can easily draw up Minnie's character without being told. But Minnie's insanity reinforces the barber's insistence that Will Mayes didn't do it and thus Faulkener uses her well.
As a matter of fact, Faulkener does a lot of things well in this story. The dialogue propels the story and adds to the tension already in the story's tone. The characters argue and cut each other off, creating a great sense of conflict and upset.
What I'd mainly like to look at, however, is Faulkner's good sentences. He uses a lot of extended phrases to drag out his sentences. The whole of the story, however, is punctuated with much shorter sentences; this adds to the kick of the story and also moves it forward.
Look at the very first paragraph--The first sentence is a mixture of brilliant metaphor, simile, and syntactic suspense: " Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass---the rumor, the story, whatever it was." The phrase "aftermath of sixty-two rainless days" is specific and acts as the suspensive element of the sentence.
The next sentence is really a fragment and its quickness punctuates the first and third sentences. It is conversational--just a half thought the narrator mutters to himself. "Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro."
The third sentence, however, is the grand finale of the paragraph: "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened." How brilliantly long and suspensive.
What gives this sentence its suspense, however, is the great three line noun phrase at its center: "gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without freshening it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors." Without this suspense, the sentence would simply read "Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them knew exactly what had happened." But Faulkner, of course, won't give up his plot line so easily. This sentence is rather parallel to a rumor in the flesh--it rolls on for longer than it should and finally ends with no one really knowing "exactly what happened."
Another great paragraph is the description of McLendon a little further down into the story. "The screen door crashed open. A man stood in the floor, his feet apart and his heavy-set body poised easily. His white shirt was open at the throat; he wore a felt hat. His hot, bold glance swept the group. His name was McLendon. He had commanded troops at the front in France and had been decorated for valor." The sentences here are short and choppy, the rhythm resembles the pulsing vein I imagine was visibly throbbing on McLendon's red temple at that moment. Each quick sentence is out of breath, much like the tone of the story at this point. The youth is raving and the whole barber shop is upset.
The last sentence of this paragraph is interesting: "He had commanded troops at the front...and had been decorated for valor." Notice it is the only sentence in this paragraph that is explicitly passive. Its information, however, also tells something of McLendon's character--this great, crashing, valiant, white man is overbearing, probably brutish, and implicitly bloodthirsty. That's how I immediately pictured him, anyway.
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