Ben Franklin Paper

Benjamin Franklin was an inventor, a successful printer, and one of the founding fathers of the United States who co-wrote and signed the US Constitution. He also wrote an Autobiography. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was intended to be a unified work written over the period of a week for his son William Franklin, who at the time was the governor of New Jersey. The Autobiography ended up being four parts with only the first several pages directed to Benjamin Franklin’s son. Much of the first part is written for people interested in his personal life. Part two is written several years later and was intended for people who were seeking self-improvement advice. Part three of the Autobiography is less personal and focuses on activities and accomplishments. Part four was very short and explains the events of his visit to London. As Franklin continued to add to his Autobiography it became more disjointed because it was written over a period of eighteen years. Parts two and three were written with out part one and therefore Franklin could not remember what he had previously written in section one. This paper will discuss some of the ways the autobiography seems unified and in what ways it is disjointed. This paper will also discuss how the span of time it took to write the Autobiography detracted from its overall theme and effectiveness.

Part one of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is unified and well written. Franklin claims to write only for his son to show how one can live well and be successful in life. Part one gives a summary of Franklin’s life into his twenties. Franklin recounts some of his family’s history. He had sixteen brothers and sisters and was the youngest son. He looked up to his father and his uncle Benjamin who he is named after. He writes about working as a teenager for his older brother James who was a printer. He loved to read and borrowed many books from a local bookseller. Later in his teens, he began to write...