Thus, one of Faulkner's great achievements is the creation of this imaginary county. He worked out his plan so carefully that we feel we know a character when he later appears in another work. With the publication of Absalom, Absalom! in 1936, Faulkner even drew a map of this county and showed the places where certain events took place.
In all of his work, Faulkner has used new techniques to express his views of man's position in the modern world. In his early works, Faulkner viewed with despair man's position in the universe. He saw man as a weak creature incapable of rising above his selfish needs. Later, Faulkner's view changed. In his more recent works, Faulkner sees man as potentially great, or, as he expressed it in his Nobel Prize speech and in A Fable, "man will not merely endure; he will prevail." But in almost all of his novels, Faulkner penetrated deeply into the psychological motivations for man's actions and the dilemma in which modern man finds himself.
Of As I Lay Dying, Faulkner writes that he wrote it in six weeks while working on the night shift (from twelve midnight to six A.M.) in a heating plant. He would fire up the boilers, then, using an overturned wheelbarrow, he would write until the boilers needed firing again. Of Faulkner's many achievements, this novel is one of his most popular.
