Shaping the American Individual

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards can be looked at as two great individuals who ended the Puritan era and started an awakening and shaping of the American individual. It looks at Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", his "Personal Narrative", and Franklin's "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" in an attempt to show how each of these authors contributed to the "Great Awakening" and shaping of the American individual.

From the Paper:

"In Edwards "Personal Narrative", he shows how through his own struggles he has become closer to god "I had a variety of concerns and exercise about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change, by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things, that I have had"(Norton 466). Edwards sought out to awaken the public, just as he had been awakened by his own struggles with Christianity, and by doing this he believed he would become closer to god. Edwards believed that god had a plan that people should follow. If you followed this predetermined plan, and truly lived your life by god, you would become one of the "elect" that would have a reserved place in heaven."

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