Faulkner started writing As I Lay Dying on Friday, October 25th, 1929, when he was supervising the night shift workers in the power plant of the University of Mississippi. At that time, Faulkner was in the midst of economic crisis and art exhaustion, and the disaster in the United States (the Great Depression of 1929) made his situation worse. Stories about the "prosperous twenties" began to disappear from newspapers, and the next "thirties" or "Great Depression" began. However, many people around him don't believe that he can become a professional writer because the sales of his previous works are very disappointing. In Faulkner, I borrowed some writing styles from older writers such as Joseph Conrad. Another influential writer is sherwood anderson. The story in his novel A Freak in a Small Town provides additional inspiration for describing the environment of the Bundrens in As I Lay Dying: Faulkner endows this family with realism and surrealism. Similarly, James Joyce's inner monologue in his epic Ulysses is also used by Faulkner in his novels. Less influential are T·S· Eliot's poems describing isolated people, especially The Hollow Man and The Waste Land.
Literally, "As I Lay Dying" tells the story of Eddie, the hostess of the Benderon family, dying and what happened to the family after her death. But figuratively speaking, the "I" in As I Lay Dying can imply the "prosperous twenties" that just passed. Although it has passed, its influence is still deeply in the minds of Americans, and the twenties are still "dying". Undoubtedly, Faulkner touched on many social realistic problems existing in American society at that time in his novels. In view of the importance of this novel and the time of its creation and publication, it can be said that As I Lay Dying is the last important American novel written in the 192s and the first one published in the 193s.
in the 192s, the southern part of the United States was still trying to recover from the civil war in the 196s and the economic colonization of the south by the north after the war. Farmers in the south have been in a long depression. In the 193s, all kinds of cooperative behaviors were encouraged almost all over the United States. Throughout the country, "collectivism" has become a slogan. In the south, party member, a Populist party, and various radical activists are fighting to improve the economic and political conditions of the disadvantaged groups, especially the poor white farmers, that is, to gather them together to oppose the rich planters and banking allies. Although the influence of populism was expanding at that time, for the south, the story of "collectivism" had a particularly conservative meaning. In the traditional sense, the collectivism ideal in the south means a kind of respect for long-standing collective relations and customs. It means paying attention to the form of etiquette. Faulkner wrote the collectivist ideal of the South into his novels.
On January 12, 193, Faulkner finished writing As I Lay Dying, and then he planned to contribute to some well-known magazines. Thirty of these novels were planned to be published in the next three years. At this time, his remuneration for short stories has exceeded that for writing four novels in the past. On April 3th, the short story A Rose for Emily was published in Tribune magazine, and other short stories published in the same year included Honor, Thrift and Martyrdom. On October 6th, As I Lay Dying was published by Cape & Smith in new york. In December, the same company published a revised version of the Temple. In the same year, Nobel Prize in Literature laureate sinclair lewis mentioned Faulkner in his speech, saying that he "liberated the South from the tears of sentimental women".