Setting

Physical setting

The events described in the short story “The Lynching of Jube Benson” by Paul Laurence Dunbar take place in the US. The outer story takes place in Gordon Fairfax’s library: “Gordon Fairfax’s library held but three men, but the air was dense with clouds of smoke”. This is also the place where Dr. Melville recounts the story of the lynching of Jube Benson, which happened seven years before the events in the outer story. 

In the inner story, the events take place in “the little town of Bradford”, which is described as a “small and primitive place, just the location for an impecunious medical man, recently out of college”. The town is inhabited by both “white and black—whites from every section, and blacks from ‘nigger town,’ as the west portion of the place was called”. Bradford is symbolic of Dr. Melville’s modest ambitions, as he prefers b...