Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiograpgy Essay, Research Paper

Benjamin Franklin “ The Autobiography.”

In his autobiography Benjamin Franklin is writing to his son. He is presenting himself as a father and a son. Benjamin Franklin generally talks good about himself except the fact that he is not good at arithmetic. He wants his son to use his Autobiography as a guide for life. His son was 40 years old when he started writing this piece.

The general impression I got from this reading was that Ben Franklin seems extremely lucky and motivated to succeed. He was very effective on his relations with other people. He was very honest and into constant self-improvement…”The Plan”.

Benjamin Franklin had a lot of internal and external motivation to prove to others that he was not any ordinary “ Runaway”. He had a very stable character. At the time he had started writing this autobiography, he did not have all that much money, he started to get wealthier later on, which does back up the “ Rags to Riches “ theory that some people have.

Benjamin Franklin had many views that were different for that time period. For example he thought differently on how the universe was setup and how it ran. Things seemed to be happening through miracles. The Puritan way of thinking was to believe religion created most things. Benjamin Franklin believed in self-reliance. He believed he was responsible for what he did then and later on.

The consequences were his. For this reason Benjamin Franklin could also be called a “Romantic”.

He had a religious upbringing. He talks about deism in his autobiography. He read many versions of the revelation. All of them seemed different at some points. After he read some book s on Deism he became a Deist. Throughout his life Benjamin Franklin kind of went back and forth between his traditional religious beliefs and Deism. He had reasons for believing a little of both.

Both his Autobiography and Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative are written to serve as guides for other people. The only difference is that Benjamin Franklin believed in self- reliance and Mary Rowlandson believed in the Bible.