Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Essay Example

It also asks if Franklin is a sincere self-help man who wants to help others, or merely a self-promoter. The key ways by which Franklin presents his story as an illustration of self-improvement are through providing external influences on his life who are also self-made people like himself and showing how planning and executing plans is part of realizing the American Dream. He is motivated to pursue self-improvement, because he had set himself to become a writer, which is not a lucrative craft, and he believed in the value of planning and hard work.

Benjamin Franklin strikes me as a person who is genuinely interested in helping others, because he provided self-tested principles and practices that enabled him to pursue small and large life goals and he merely shared pragmatic and moralistic ideas and principles, which he believed can help people achieve their dreams, no matter how hard their circumstances may be, a process that resulted to the promotion of the American Dream. One of the external influences on Benjamin Franklin was his father, Josiah Franklin.

He describes how Josiah focuses on teaching his children, not only how to live by one's energy and determination, but how to live uprightly. In one instance, Josiah taught his son that “nothing was useful which was not honest” (Franklin Chapter 1). . From here, Benjamin embarked on a mission of being more aware of how he writes, a metacognitive practice, which helped him arrange the logic and perspicacity of his arguments. Benjamin's friends and patrons also influenced him to become a better person.

Several governors, for instance, even when they knew that Benjamin was a penniless lad, invited him to their libraries. Apparently, these people also believed in the idea of self-improvement and that by encouraging others like Benjamin, they can also help improve the lives of other people. Benjamin further shows self-improvement by explaining how planning and executing plans is part of realizing the American Dream. An example is how he improved his own knowledge on diverse topics and skills through self-help.

For instance, he did not enjoy meat a great deal, so he read a book on preparing vegetarian recipes. He also abhorred the suffering of animals for humanity's palettes, which almost made him a pure Vegan, or one who does not even eat fish. Benjamin not only ate what he wanted, but also saved money by boarding and preparing food for his own tastes and beliefs. Furthermore, Benjamin admitted his problems with arithmetic. He read a book Cocker's book of Arithmetick and taught himself arithmetic better than his teachers did.

Franklin further improved his command of English by studying the Socratic method. He read Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, which helped him enhance how he questions people's ideas, arguments, and beliefs, to the point of embarrassing them, in the way that Socrates once did. These are various self-help measures that underscore the value of knowing one's weaknesses and preparing to remedy them through