Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography should be required reading for college students. More work such as this is needed on the college level. It challenges students to read and comprehend on a higher level. Franklin’s will to become a better person, a perfect person, is indeed incredible. The autobiography also allows students some needed insight to the literature and life of the middle class of the eighteenth century. A work with so much controversy that was written in the eighteenth century and is still one of America’s best sellers is perfect reading for college students.
The autobiography challenges readers to read and comprehend on a higher level. If the reader is reading for comprehension then chances are they will learn new vocabulary. Franklin took advantage of his wide vocabulary in his autobiography. In the Edinburgh Review, Lord Jeffrey Francis tells us that, “We cannot expect, therefore, either that he should write with extraordinary elegance or grace; or that he should treat of the accomplishments, follies, and occupations of polite life.”
The autobiography illustrates Franklin’s thrive for moral perfection. He outlines virtues he feels are essential and makes a book so that he can keep up with any violations of the virtues. He later creates a Scheme of Order to organize his day. In the autobiography Franklin makes many statements about how feels one should achieve personal perfection. I think J.A. Leo Lemay gives our reasons for accepting Franklin’s view on perfection when he states “It is because Franklin gave us the definitive formulation of the American Dream”, from the Autobiography and the American Dream (350). Lemay also tells us in the American Dream that in the Autobiography Franklin balances optimism against the realities of life and this tension in the persona is presented by an authorial voice that calls attention to the wishful, self-deceiving nature of the persona, and of man, who sees only what his vanity all him to see.
This book allows students some insight to the literature and life of the middle class of the eighteenth century. In his autobiography he gives many insightful accounts and events of himself and others as well. “Franklin’s Autobiography is the only enduring best-seller written in America before the nineteenth century, as well as the most popular autobiography ever written.” (Editors, back cover). During a period when a woman’s role was behind a man’s, Franklin realized how crucial education was for women. In his autobiography Franklin has an encounter with a woman who successfully ran a business after the death of her husband who could not run the same business. This was Franklin’s response, “ I mention this Affair chiefly for the Sake of recommending that Branch of Education for our young Females, as likely to be of more Use to them and their Children in Case of Widowhood than either Music or Dancing, by preserving them from Losses by Imposition of crafty Men, and enabling them to continue perhaps a profitable mercantile House with establish’d Correspondence till a Son is grown up fit to undertake an go on with it, to the lasting Advantage and enriching of the Family” (81). Without Franklin’s personal encounters and the fact that he chose to share them with us we may not be able to see eighteenth century literature and culture as we see it.
Franklin’s autobiography may be difficult to understand because it contains the capitalization of all nouns and Franklin uses advanced writing and wordiness. For example he state, Having emerg’d from the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro’ Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducting Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own Situations, and therefore fit to be imitated.” (1) If a reader can get pass the capitalization of nouns and Franklins vocabulary, this book can be educational and benefit the reader. It has proven itself to be so because it has made it through years and years of changing literature and still has been greatly noted.
Because Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is so complex and insightful it should be required reading for college students. Franklin’s work challenges the reader to read for comprehension and exposes them to new vocabulary. The autobiography also allows students some insight to the literature and culture of the middle class of the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography was well written and is a perfect example of great literature theta college students should be exposed to.
Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, eds. Benjamin Franklin’ s Autobiography. New York: Norton
Company, 1986.