Benjamin Franklin Essay - UniversalEssays

Custom Writing Services

This sample Benjamin Franklin Essay is published for informational purposes only. Free essays and research papers, are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a high quality essay at affordable price please use our custom essay writing service.

A leader in the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin was one of the founders of the American political tradition and a distinguished scientist, diplomat, and humanist. He was also one of the best-known and most-admired men of letters in the world during the mid-1700s, and is considered an epitome of the American Enlightenment. His most renowned literary efforts include the annual Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732-1757) and his posthumously published Autobiography (1868).

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Self-Educated

Born January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin was one of thirteen children of Josiah Franklin, a candle maker, and his wife, Abiah Folger Franklin. His parents were devout Puritans. Puritans were a religious group who stood against the practices of the Church of England. Like many other Puritans, Franklin’s family had left England and moved to the colonies in New England in search of religious freedom.

Franklin received little formal schooling as his family was poor, but learned to read at an early age and his family encouraged intellectual discussions. By the age of eleven, he was working in his father’s shop making candles and soap, though he was soon unhappy doing this trade. The following year, Franklin left his father’s trade to work for his brother, James, a printer of a Boston newspaper. While learning the printing business, Franklin became a voracious reader of every word that came into the shop.

Silence and Enlightenment

James Franklin founded his own paper, New England Courant, in 1721. Franklin soon began writing clever essays of his own criticizing the Boston establishment, and publishing them in the paper. Some of the essays were written under the name Silence Dogood, a fictional parson’s widow. He used irony and satire in the pieces written under her name, which were later collected in The Dogood Papers (1722). When authorities imprisoned James Franklin for his own critical articles, Franklin continued the paper on his own for a time.

In 1723, the seventeen-year-old Franklin left home and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to work as a printer with Samuel Keimer. By this time, Franklin had begun to embrace the ideas of such Enlightenment thinkers as physicist Sir Isaac Newton and philosopher John Locke. The Enlightenment, which began in the sixteenth century and lasted until the late seventeenth century, was a movement that promoted the use of reason to learn truth. During this time period, many important scientific advances and discoveries were made through the use of observation and experimentation.

Poor Richard

Franklin went to England in 1724, where he quickly became a master printer and lived among the writers of London. There, he also published a deistical pamphlet, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (1725), which stressed the necessity of frugality to achieving success. He returned to Philadelphia a few years later and started his own press. Franklin began publishing a newspaper, the Philadelphia Gazette, and later a publication called Poor Richard’s Almanack. He began publishing the former in 1729 and soon turned it into one of the leading papers in the colonies. The latter was put in print beginning in 1732, and Franklin continued to release new editions until 1757.

Poor Richard’s Almanack brought Franklin great success in the colonies, then abroad, selling ten thousand copies annually. Intended to improve himself and others, his almanacs included weather predictions, short sayings adapted from folk and European sources, a history of European kings and dates of courts, tides, fairs, recipes, a meetings calendar, and the movement of planets and eclipses. Through the almanac’s fictional character, his persona of Richard Saunders under which Franklin published the almanac, the book is filled with maxims Franklin gathered from many sources which he then adapted to the circumstances of the impoverished Richard.

Political and Scientific Endeavors

In Philadelphia in the late 1720s, Franklin took on such governmental posts as clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly and postmaster of Philadelphia. He became the official printer of Pennsylvania in 1730. Franklin also began a new focus in promoting organizations that benefited society. For example, in 1727, he formed Junto, a society of tradesmen who shared business information and were involved in activities that benefited society.

These years also marked the beginning of his scientific endeavors. Franklin invented the Franklin stove (a metal stove used for heating a room), then became fascinated with electricity. His invention in 1750 of the lightning rod (a metal rod that is set on top of a building to protect it from being damaged if it is struck by lightning) added to his reputation. In his well-known experiment, Franklin used a kite to prove that lightning is a form of electricity. Franklin’s letters to England concerning his discoveries and theories about electricity brought him fame as did his book on the subject Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751).

In 1751, Franklin was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, beginning a period of public service that would last until nearly the end of his life. A leader in the dominant Quaker political party, Franklin created lawmaking strategies and wrote powerful statements defending the right of the people’s elected representatives to regulate the government of Pennsylvania. As a representative to the Assembly, Franklin was initially loyal to the British Empire, including during the French and Indian War.

This war, which lasted from 1754 to 1763, was fought between France and Great Britain in North America. At its end, the British gained control of land east of the Mississippi River. To defend the British Empire, Franklin persuaded the Assembly to pass Pennsylvania’s first militia law, allotted money for defense, and appointed government representatives to carry on a war. While Franklin considered Britain the benevolent head of the American colonies, he was occasionally alarmed by British indifference toward the colonists.

Working Abroad for American Interests

Franklin lived in England from 1757 to 1762, seeking aid to restrain the power of the Penn family in Pennsylvania. (The Penn family founded the colony.) Returning to America, he traveled throughout the colonies for nearly two years as the deputy postmaster general for North America. He would hold this post for nearly twenty years, and during that time greatly improved the postal service. Franklin also continued his aid to poorer members of his family and to the family of his common-law wife, Deborah, with whom he became involved in 1730. They had two children, Frankie, who died as a small child, and daughter Sarah. Deborah Franklin also raised her husband’s illegitimate son, William.

In 1764, Franklin lost his seat in the Pennsylvania Assembly. However, he returned to England as Pennsylvania’s agent, with a special assignment to request that Pennsylvania be taken over as a royal colony. Franklin decided not to make the request because the royal government seemed dangerous at the time. Remaining in England for nine years, he became the foremost American spokesman in Britain.

The Beginnings of the American Revolution

Franklin played a central role in the great crises that led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. For example, the 1765 Stamp Act placed a tax on all business and law papers and printed materials in the American colonies. Many colonists opposed the tax as taxation without representation. After learning of the violent protest against the Stamp Act, Franklin stiffened his own stand against the measure. InadramaticappearancebeforeParliamentin1766, Franklin outlined American insistence on self-government. When the tax was removed, Franklin again expressed his faith in American prospects within the British Empire.

In 1774, Franklin’s tenure in England came to an unhappy end. Against his instructions, his friends in Massachusetts published letters by Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that Franklin had obtained confidentially. Exposed as a dishonest schemer, Franklin was reprimanded by the British in 1774 and removed from his position as postmaster general. Franklin left England in March 1775, and the American Revolution began the following month.

Gaining French Support

The American Revolution was a war in which the American colonies fought for independence from Great Britain. During the first months of the revolution, Franklin enjoyed the surge for independence and was soon a confirmed revolutionary. In 1776, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was among those who signed it. Franklin used his skills as a diplomat when he was appointed as a representative to France. There, he negotiated an alliance with King Louis XVI which led to the French lending their armies and navies to America. Much of the gunpowder used by American revolutionaries was actually obtained from France, a longtime rival of Great Britain. Franklin also secured other outside aid.

Franklin was still in France when the British surrendered after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. The following year, he set the main terms of the final peace agreement between England and the colonies as other peace commissioners, including John Adams and John Jay, made their way to the Paris-based peace talks. Franklin, Jay, and Adams made a peace treaty of genuine national independence in 1783.

Constitution and Autobiography

Returning to Philadelphia from France in 1785, Franklin spent three years as the president of the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania. Though ill, he continued to work on his Autobiography which remained unfinished at his death and was first published posthumously as Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in 1868. (It was not published in its complete form until 1874.) Covering only the years from 1731 to 1757 and originally begun in 1771, the Autobiography was written to provide guidance to his son William.

In the summer of 1787, Franklin attended the Constitutional Convention and urged that the resulting Constitution be ratified. He also approved the inauguration of the new government under President George Washington. A month after writing a major essay against slavery, Franklin died peacefully in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four.

Works in Literary Context

Considered one of America’s greatest writers, Franklin brought to his writing a broad humanism and selflessness, employed a sense of grace and wit, and promoted ideas of the Enlightenment. Possessed of an infinitely curious mind fixed on understanding and improving the world around him, he sought a better life for people of all classes and situations through his actions and his writings. He gave an American flavor to the epistolary and essay forms, mastered the use of persona in creating the first memorable American comic character, and retained a homespun sense of humor that resonated for generations. In his over twenty thousand different works, he was stylistically focused on clarity, precision, and propriety. His major literary influences included Joseph Addison, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, John Bunyan, and Daniel Defoe. Franklin often focused on scientific and rational thought; he also firmly believed in God and his spiritual beliefs shaped the world view that emerged in his works.

Humor

Franklin’s reputation as a humorist derives from his Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanacks, and a number of his published essays. In Franklin’s Autobiography, he renders his rags-to-riches story with exaggeration and a sly sense of humor. Writing under the pseudonym Richard Saunders in his almanacs, Franklin portrays Richard as a figure of satire in the earliest editions. Richard is a brow-beaten farmer who considers himself an accomplished astrologer. The humor in the annual publications is also found in his poems and in his maxims or sayings, many of which have remained popular to this day. The essays included in The Dogood Papers also employ a satiric sense of humor. Written by a sixteen-year-old Franklin, the epistolary essays take on the narrative voice of the fictional young widow who addresses with humor such topics as alcoholism, religious fanatics, and fashion. For example, in ”Dogood XII,” she argues against abstinence from alcohol, maintaining that some people’s outlooks and personalities improve after they have consumed alcoholic beverages.

Highest Good

In nearly all of his writings, Franklin aims for the highest good of humankind. Franklin’s work appeals to human reason and strives to socially and morally better people. Through his publications, he also hoped to improve greater society as well. His almanacs are educational, if not moralizing, and he used them to instruct common people by conveying to them the compressed knowledge and wit of his many proverbs, along with innumerable charts, lists, and facts ranging from agricultural to cosmological. Franklin’s satires and essays were usually written with a particular political or social end in mind. Even his writings on religion and science, such Experiments and Observations on Electricity, underscore the importance of his utilitarian worldview.

While his Autobiography was originally written as an instructional guide for his son William, Franklin also hoped others would be influenced by and imitate the path he took in life. By explaining how he rose from obscurity to influential public person, Franklin wanted others to learn from their mistakes and achieve their highest good in whatever form that might take. Similarly, the essays written as Dogood in the The Dogood Papers are satiric, but also intended to highlight and correct what the fictional widow perceives as the important moral concerns of the Boston society in the 1720s. Though humorous, the essays show that even at sixteen, Franklin was already concerned with underscoring the highest good for people.

Works in Critical Context

Critics have praised Franklin’s works—primarily his Autobiography and his many Poor Richard Almanacks—for creating for himself an identity as one of the first true American citizens. The vast majority of criticism has focused on his legitimacy as an artist, especially in relation to his Autobiography. Some critics have argued that Franklin’s works lack artistic merit. Others have objected to that characterization, praising the simplicity and lucidity of his style. Scholars have acknowledged, however, that the vast majority of Franklin’s writings were designed for utilitarian rather than literary purposes.

Poor Richard’s Almanack

When the first issue of Poor Richard’s Almanack was published in 1732, it was an immediate hit with readers and sold second only to the Bible over the course of its run. Critics believe that Franklin’s almanac was the most popular nonreligious publication of its day because of the range of information it included and the humor and wit included therein. Historians believed that the single greatest reason for the success of Poor Richard’s was Franklin’s ability to spice the prosaic matter of the ordinary almanac with the more engaging commentary than his competitors could write. Over the years, scholars have focused their attention on such issues as the source of Richard’s name and the source of his proverbs. Critics lauded his Franklin’s ability to rewrite proverbs derived from other sources in order to incorporate American elements or make them shorter. Calling the almanacs ”an institution,” Carl Van Doren in his Benjamin Franklin noted that ”Franklin as Poor Richard was merely insisting that the first thing to build in their [the colonists’] house was the plain foundation. But with how much wit and charm he insisted!”

Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Franklin’s Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was the most popular autobiography in U.S. history and considered by critics to be his most stylistically developed literary achievement. It is still considered one of the finest examples of the genre. Critics and scholars have noted that the Autobiography communicates wit, morality, candor, and integrity in a light, self-deprecating style that fluctuates widely on topics related to Franklin’s diverse interests. Although considered inaccurate in some details, critics consider Autobiography a major document in the history of the American Republic. Some critics, however, have observed that Franklin’s attention to the virtues of industry, prudence, and frugality led to an unflattering caricature of him as a smug, priggish pedant.

Most early reviews of the Autobiography were overwhelmingly positive. Early twentieth-century authors such as D. H. Lawrence and William Carlos Williams faulted Franklin for his apparent complacency. Later reviewers questioned the accuracy of this portrait, claiming that Franklin was adopting the pose of a naive narrator in order to create a universally accessible image of a fallible but self-made man. As Jennifer Jordan Baker writes in Early American Literature:

As both a tale of his own rise to wealth and social prominence as well as more speculative archetype of the success other Americans might achieve, the Autobiography ultimately operates as a financial instrument … that attests to the economic promise of America.

References:

Bowen, Catherine Drinker. The Most Dangerous Man in America: Scenes from the Life of Benjamin Franklin. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.
Clark, Ronald W. Benjamin Franklin: A Biography. New York: Random House, 1983.
Hawke, David Freeman. Franklin. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. 554
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Lopez, Claude-Anne and Eugenia W. Herbert. The Private Franklin: The Man and His Family. New York: Norton, 1975.
Middlekauf, Robert. Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996.
Morgan, Edmund S. Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.
Schiff, Stacy. A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. New York: Holt, 2005.
Schoenbrun, David. Triumph in Paris: The Exploits of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Harper & Row, 1976.
Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Viking Press, 1938.
Wright, Esmond. Franklin of Philadelphia. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1986.
Baker, Jennifer Jordan. ”Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and the Credibility of Personality.” Early American Literature vol. 35, no. 3 (2000): 274-293.