The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The autobiography of Benjamin Franklin - Essay ExampleThe 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 liveness journey begun as a short(p) and unknown son of candle maker that turned to a successful businessman and started getting respectfully acknowledged in the American society. He tells the proofreader 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 substantial a ain 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, chast ity and humbleness (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 cartridge clip he decided to focus upon them one afterward one. He tells My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judgd 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 era and, when I should be maestro of that, then(prenominal) 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 etymon he realized that his personality needs much more improvements as he expected. He did thorough self-examination and realistically identified his personality gap 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 eternally 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 squeeze set of thirteen virtues. He was self-motivated to acquire the virtues to improve his personality. As he said I wishd to live wit hout 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