Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography - Essay Example

Nevertheless, he tried as much as possible to stick to his initial outline. Franklin spent about 12 years compiling his work and this had an effect on his overall autobiography. This essay will therefore analyze factors in Franklin’s autobiography that makes his work unified. The essay will also, analyze the effect of time in development of the autobiography particularly to its effectiveness and themes development. The most interesting aspect of the autobiography is that it describes Franklin’s development process.

Precisely, the autobiography starts with an unprofessional Franklin and ends with a political leader. The book therefore gives a systematic description of franklin’s development. For instance, he stood out among other boys of his age. He claimed, “I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally a leader among the boys and sometimes led them into scrapes” (Welliot, 1909, p. 9). Franklin begins by identifying temperance, order resolution, sincerity, industry, and tranquility as some of the important qualities that he needed to develop.

This infers that he had long-term goals and plans to achieve. By coming up with the stated factors, Franklin aimed at identifying his weaknesses and those of the entire American society. Franklin also proved that the American dream is achievable through his devised systematic development process. The identification process took place in his early twenties. This infers that the objectives outlined at the beginning of the autobiography could have been lifelong achievements. Although Franklin did not develop an explicit period for his objectives, his book gives a systematic approach to his initial problems.

This proves that the book had a relatively high degree of organization despite the long time he took to write it. The systematic development of the author as shown in the book proves the book to be a highly unified book. Franklin’s autobiography therefore begins by presenting a problem and ends with a systematic solution to the problem. The systematic development of a solution proves without a doubt that Franklin’s book is a highly unified book. Although Franklin wrote his book in parts, the autobiography has a unified structure, which combined the four basic parts into a whole manuscript.

This aspect proves that its author had a plan that enabled him develop the book. The book describes Franklin through his development in a systematic format. He continually gave an encounter of his commitment to development throughout the biography. For instance while he was living in London, he claimed, “most part of the time I worked hard at my business, and spent but little upon myself except in seeing plays and in books” (Welliot, 1909, p. 47). He tried to maintain his focus on a unified biography but at times, it was not possible due to the realities of life.

Therefore, some of the discontinuities correspond with realities in the author’s life. In fact, presenting the realities of the author’s life contributes to the development of the major theme of development in the biography. Theme development is the second factor that proves the organization standards or the unification level in the book. Acquisition of wealth, moral excellence, and improvement of communication skills are the central themes of the book. To realize a full development of these themes, the autobiograp