Reflection: Benjamin Franklin

So basically, this whole story was about how Benjamin Franklin rode a boat to Philadelphia from Burlington Virginia having spent a couple of nights waiting for a boat, and then after finding one, gets to Philadelphia where he immediately buys a large amount of bread, gets a drink at the river, gives away his remaining bread, then promptly falls asleep at during a meeting at the local Quaker meeting house (Franklin 106- 108).


The story does not seem that interesting when told by an outside source such as myself, but when Franklin tells it himself, it seems to make the story suddenly become much more interesting and comical rather than boring and thought provoking. I could easily see myself reading the rest of Franklin’s autobiography just by listening to this short section of the beginning of it. There is just a way in that he tells his story that makes it actually entertaining to listen to him talk about riding on a boat, eating, and sleeping. If anyone else tried to do that, it would put me to sleep almost immediately. It is true that almost anything would put me to sleep right now, seeing as how it’s 1:30 in the morning and I still have several daily journals to finish and AP Chemistry lab write-up, and a Spanish letter some kid in Peru, but I had no time this weekend because it was my birthday today, well, yesterday now I guess, and my brothers birthday was on Friday so I had no time to do any homework with all of the stuff going on for our compound birthdays. Maybe I could have an extra day for journals for my birthday? Just a suggestion. Anyway, I also like the choice in reader that they chose to iterate this segment of Franklin’s autobiography. It seemed to me more of what Franklin’s actual voice would sound like, kind of a wise old grandpa that still had a good sense of humor and a good memory that could remember all of the things that had ever happened to him. I can easily see how he was very well liked in the colonies and how the French loved him. It is not hard to imagine Franklin going to France and telling them stories like these and having them love him immediately and thereafter Franklin convinces them to sympathize with the American cause and help us defeat the British.


His writing style to me does not seem to me like either rational or puritan. He does not talk of either God or of some kind of intellectual discourse. Instead, he seems more to just present the facts as how they happened, with a slight ironic backing, like when he said

“I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there.” (Franklin 108)

This shows how he does not make the reader try to guess what he is trying to reference or trying to make the reader think about, he brings it up plainly so that the reader can easily discern what to really think about. I also like how he has a kind of light writing style and then randomly adds in “heavy” phrases like “Man is sometimes more generous when he has little money than when he has plenty; perhaps to prevent his being thought to have but little” (Franklin 108).


Franklin, Benjamin. "from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 106-108. Print