Benjamin Franklin was a man of many things. He was an inventor, scientist, statesman, printer, philosopher, musician, and economist (The Franklin Institute). Benjamin Franklin is well known for many of his inventions. Some of these inventions include the lightning rod and the bifocal glasses (The Franklin Institute). Along with inventing things and other activities, Benjamin Franklin also wrote many things. He has a set of his own virtues, he wrote newspapers, almanacs and journals, and an autobiography. J.A. Leo Lemay writes in his, Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream, about how Franklin's Autobiography compares to the "American Dream".
There are many ways in which Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography could relate to the American Dream. Lemay points out one huge relationship between the two. He describes the "rags to riches" opportunities and the "rise from impotence to importance, from dependence to independence, from helplessness to power" (Lemay). All of these things were very important to the American Dream, and they were all apart of Benjamin Franklins Autobiography.
Lemay describes how the people viewed Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography in this quote.
This aspect of the American Dream motif gives the book much of its allegorical meaning and its archetypal power. Readers frequently observe that the story of Franklin's rise has its counterpart in the rise of the United States. Franklin was conscious of this. In the later eighteenth century he was the most famous man in the Western world. Even John Adams, in an attack on Franklin written thirty years after his death, conceded: "His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them."11 And Franklin was famous as an American.12 He frequently wrote about America, was familiar with all the eighteenth-century ideas about America, and knew that his Autobiography would be read, at least by some Englishmen and Europeans, as a book about America. As Benjamin Vaughan pointed out in a letter urging Franklin to go on with the Autobiography: "All that has happened to you is also connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people" (p. 135). And critical articles, such as that by James M. Cox, show that the book has frequently been read as an allegory of the rise to power and to independence of the United States.13 (Lemay).
The people saw Franklin as a model to what America was. When they read his Autobiography, they thought they could become rich and do what Franklin did. His Autobiography was a light of hope for the new world, and it was a historical marker for new American life.
A more fundamental reason for the book's power and popularity lies in the archetypal appeal of the individual's rise from helplessness to power, from dependence to independence. In that normal development that every human being experiences from nebulousness to identity, from infancy to maturity, we all recapitulate the experience of the American Dream.14 That is why the American Dream has been and is so important to so many people, as well as to American literature. That explains the appeal of the myth of the log-cabin birth of our American presidents and the popularity of the role of the self-made man. The American Dream, on this archetypal level, embodies a universal experience. (Lemay)
Once again, Lemay describes how important the rags to riches, dependent to independent, helplessness to power concepts were to Americans. They are still important to people today too. People still come to America for a "better life", and sometimes, they find that life. America may seem like a magical place to some people, but in reality, it is the faith, hope, and perseverance of the American that makes things happen.
Works Cited
Lemay, J.A. Leo. "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream." InThe Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth Century. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1978. Quoted as "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream." in Bloom, Harold, ed. The American Dream, Bloom's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BLTTAD005&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 13, 2010).
The Franklin Institute. PECO, 1994. The Franklin Institute Science Museum. 13 Oct. 2010
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