Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that when people read autobiographies, it is to learn more about the author's life, his or her experiences or simply what kind of person the author really is; however what most people fail to question is if the autobiography is a true reflection of the author's character or merely an elaborate fabrication that nobody has sufficient evidence to refute. The author points out that the main achievement of Benjamin Franklin's "Autobiography" is self-invention; he portrays himself as just another tax-paying citizen; however, he talks about how he let the government use his name to endorse different financial projects and attempts to establish himself as a sort of authority on virtue. The paper relates that writing an autobiography correctly includes (1) acting the part in real life when in public, (2) writing convincingly and (3) only fabricating things that you know nobody can disprove.

From the Paper:

"On the other hand, autobiographies are not always automatically taken for truth, so to a degree, public behavior must be in agreement with what was written for it to complete the image created. Benjamin Franklin, generally, did a good job of acting the part in public to help support the image he had created of himself, but there are certain aspects of his life that he did not try as hard to fit into the mold he had made. These aspects included women, chastity, and humility. Franklin's idea of having humility was to be like Jesus and Socrates. Franklin did many things in public and in his writings that counteracted any attempt to convince his audience that he was humble or that he strived to be like Jesus."

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