The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Essay Example

The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin focuses upon the overarching theme of self-motivation as he talks in detail about his experiences and intentions to serve as role model for the other people. In the autobiography he describes his life journey begun as a poor and unknown son of candle maker that turned to a successful businessman and started getting respectfully acknowledged in the American society. He tells the reader the key factors behind his success and talks about the virtues that he strived to acquire in order to foster the process of self-improvement.

The autobiography reflects his thoughts and intentions towards self-improvement for which he developed a personal plan comprising of thirteen virtues. The thirteen virtues he identified as part of his personal plan of conduct include “temperament, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility” (Franklin, p77-78). He explains the precepts of these virtues and talks about the process through which he attempted to acquire these virtues in his life.

Rather attempting to acquire all the virtues at a time he decided to focus upon them one after one. He tells "My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen" (Franklin, p78) Franklin explains his personal plan that he followed to acquire the thirteen virtues.

In the beginning he realized that his personality needs much more improvements as he expected. He did thorough self-examination and realistically identified his personality fault to overcome them. He feel satisfied that following his plan resulted in diminishing the faults and flaws of his personality. He took one week to acquire one virtue and after thirteen week he started the process again and repeated four time a year, then once in a year and then only once in several years. However, he followed and remained stick to these virtues throughout his life till his death.

Franklin tells the story of his self-improvement mainly through the description of his personal plan and detailed explanation of the thirteen virtues and his quest to acquire those. The autobiography tells that his efforts of self-improvement were directed by self-motivation. He thinks realistically about his personality flaws and always remained eager to learn the ways for self-improvement. He read several books and texts to know about the virtues that could help in self-improvement and his reading and observations resulted in the formation of compact set of thirteen virtues.

He was self-motivated to acquire the virtues to improve his personality. As he said " I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into" (Franklin, p77) The reading unveils that self-improvement plays key role in the life of Benjamin Franklin and his autobiography is great source of inspiration for the readers as it talks about the path of achieving self-improvement. The description of self-improvement plan led by Franklin affirms that he is not self-promoter but genuinely a benevolent man