Summary
Benjamin Franklin addresses this to his son, positing that he might want to know about his father’s history. Overall, he has come from poverty and obscurity and has no issue telling his story; it is almost like living one’s life over again. He will be like all old men who must be indulged and who enjoy slaking their vanity (which there is nothing wrong with doing).
Franklin learned most of his older family history from his uncle’s notes. The family lived in Ecton, Northamptonshire, for over three hundred years. They tended to all be smiths. Franklin was the youngest son of a youngest son five generations back. His grandfather had four sons, Thomas being a well-known figure in country affairs. Franklin was named for one of his other uncles, a politician. The family was Protestant through the Reformation; some remained in the Church of England and others were Episcopal later. Josiah, his own father, married young and moved to New England in 1682 to practice their religion freely. He married twice, and Benjamin’s mother, Abiah, was the second wife.
Franklin's older brothers are put to different trades, and it seems at first that Franklin will be devoted to the church and to scholarly pursuits. He is thus sent to school, but while he excels in writing, he does poorly at arithmetic. He is sent back to work with his father as a tallow chandler and soap boiler, which he detests. He wishes to go to the sea.
Franklin is a leader among his childhood friends; even though they get into some scrapes, he is convinced that “nothing was useful which was not honest” (9).
Franklin describes his father as healthy, strong, smart, mechanically inclined, and very savvy in judgment and prudential matters. He encourages his children not to care for the food on the table, which Franklin adapts and finds quite useful. His mother is also healthy and bears ten children.
Over time Franklin’s dislike for the trade continues, and his father knows that if he does not find his son a new one he may take to the sea. After a failed attempt at the cutler’s trade, Franklin’s love of reading leads Josiah to conclude he ought to be in the printing trade. Franklin is bound in indentures to his brother James, who is already in the business. Franklin excels there.
During this time Franklin also writes a bit of poetry but never devotes too much effort to it; he is glad to have escaped being a poor poet. His best friend is John Collins. The two enjoy arguing and Collins encourages Franklin to polish his manner of writing. Franklin also practices by copying out and imitating parts of the Spectator.
When Franklin is sixteen he decides to become a vegetarian and is pleased at how he feels better and also has more money to spend on books. During this time he also studies logic and rhetoric. He moves from contradiction/positive argumentation, to humble inquirer/doubter, and finally to modest diffidence.
Around 1720 Franklin’s brother began to print a newspaper–the second in America, entitled The New England Courant. Franklin thrills to the conversations of the men who contribute and wants to try his hand at it. He anonymously submits pieces and is lauded by readers. His brother finds out and accuses him of vanity. The two often squabble, and his brother beats him.
Franklin is once called up to testify in a libel case. The resulting complications for his brother even lead the paper to be put in Franklin’s name for a short time. Due to this, Franklin is able to get out of his indentures, but this makes his brother angry and he endeavors to prevent Franklin from getting work with any other printer.
Franklin is infuriated and decides to leave town, a decision also made easier by the fact that others in town were starting to call him an infidel or an atheist. He travels to New York at the age of seventeen with very little money in his pocket. He eventually travels down to Philadelphia on advice that there will be a printer there who may employ him.
The trip to Philadelphia is an arduous journey with terrible weather, but Franklin meets a lifelong friend along the way: Dr. Brown, a brilliant and snarky man of wicked religious opinions.
Finally Franklin arrives in Philadelphia. He is hungry and dirty and purchases three pennies’ worth of bread; he is surprised that he gets three large puffy rolls. As he walks he passes the home of his future wife, Miss Read. He gives two of the rolls away and wanders into a Quaker meetinghouse. He falls asleep.
Franklin proceeds to Bradford’s, the printer of whom he heard, but the old father of that man says his son does not need help and directs him to Keimer, another printer in town. Old Bradford takes him there and introduces him, proceeding to ply Keimer with wily questions under the guise of a customer. Franklin is startled and impressed.
As time passes, Franklin observes that both printers–Keimer, with whom he works, and Bradford, with whom he lodges–are not very qualified. Keimer is also annoyed that Franklin stays with Bradford, and gets him a place at Mr. Read’s house.
Franklin is frugal and industrious and lives well. His brother-in-law Robert Homes writes him a letter telling him his family is upset at his abrupt departure, to which Franklin responds. Sir William Keith, the governor of the province, is with Homes when he reads Franklin’s response and marvels at the young man’s expressiveness. He says he will support Franklin in starting his own printing business.
Sir William invites Franklin to see him and tells him of his offer of help. Franklin is flattered. Sir William says he will write a letter to Josiah Franklin encouraging him to assist his son in this endeavor; in the meanwhile, this will be secret. Franklin agrees and continues working for Keimer.
After a time, with Sir William’s letter in tow, Franklin returns home. His family is pleased to see him, but his brother is still angry and bitter. Franklin accidentally offends him by visiting the printinghouse, where his brother’s employees marvel at his watch.
Josiah reads the letter but ultimately decides Franklin is too young to be set up, though he is flattered by Sir William’s attention. He decides that Franklin can go back to Philadelphia and that if he behaves well, avoids libel and lampooning, is industrious and good with money, and saves up close to the amount he needs, Josiah will help with the rest by the time he is twenty-one. Franklin agrees.
On the return to Philadelphia Franklin stops and visits his brother John in Newport, Rhode Island. The rest of his journey is diverting enough, but a Quaker matron warns him of two female passengers whom she believes to be women of ill repute. Indeed, Franklin is glad of this near miss, as the women are later accused of stealing.
During a stop in New York he finds his friend Collins, who, while intelligent and learned, now drinks too much and loses his money through gambling. Collins planned on accompanying Franklin to Philadelphia, and the latter now has to pay for his friend’s expenses.
In New York, Franklin also comes to the attention of Governor Burnet; they talk liberally of literature.
In Philadelphia, Franklin's friendship with Collins continues to fracture. One day, he, Collins, and other young men are rowing, and Collins refuses to do his part. Franklin says he will not contribute unless Collins does, and eventually he throws the fractious young man into the river. The friendship is now effectively over, and Franklin considers that his lending Collins money that did not belong to him (he was tasked with holding onto money for Vernon, one of his father’s friends) is the first great erratum of his life.
Sir William tells Franklin he will help him set up shop even though his father will not, but in retrospect Franklin sees that his father was right about his youth being an impediment. Franklin will also come to see that Sir William is a man of many promises but no follow-through.
Franklin continues to work for Keimer in Philadelphia and to fret over the money he’d lent. He starts eating fish when he sees how one fish ate another fish and realizes humans would be reasonable to do the same.
Keimer and Franklin live reasonably well and often practice the art of disputation and argumentation. Franklin agrees to help him set up a new sect: Keimer will preach and Franklin will confound the opponents. This works for about three months, but Keimer has a hard time not eating meat.
Analysis
The first part of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is perhaps the most famous. The young, smart-but-snarky, and overwhelmingly ambitious Franklin runs away from his poor family and arrives in a bustling city where he quickly distinguishes himself by dint of his hard work, pluck, and intellect. There has been much ink spilled extolling the merits of the Autobiography (and a bit offering some criticism), and indeed, it is hard not to get swept up in the future Founding Father’s ebullient narrative of his early life. The characteristics Americans in all eras of history tend to value are on full display in Franklin’s work: initiative, individualism, industriousness, and alacrity. Though the structure is complicated by Franklin’s writing process and ultimately his death, the work–particularly the first part–is immensely satisfying.
Franklin as the archetypal American (more on that in later analyses) is apparent within the first few pages. He is not initially fond of the structure of school but manifests a keen intellect and wit right away; these are tempered with a bit of arrogance, but arrogance rooted in a consciousness of his own singularity. He is absolutely willing to work hard, though, and will do what he needs to succeed. Many times he comes to the attention of older and more influential men, a classic Horatio Alger hero more than a century earlier. His desire to perfect himself is also present early in his life, seen in his copying passages of the Spectator to be a better writer, learning what type of conversation and argumentation are best, identifying and attempting to correct errata, and living honestly and frugally.
Another one of the most salient themes of the work is immediately revealed: family. Franklin addresses this to his son William, saying that he gives the account in order to share his life story. The tone of the first part of the work is cheerful and conversational as Franklin shares the humble story of the family stretching back three-hundred years. It is a classic tale of his ancestors’ religious persecution and travel across the Atlantic to settle in New England. There is foreshadowing of Franklin’s own political career when he mentions Thomas, an uncle who became active in county affairs. Franklin has a lot of positive things to say about many members of his family, praising his father’s strength in mind and body and his prudence, and occasionally offering comments about brothers and brothers-in-law.
Family is not always a positive, however; Franklin does not shy away from depicting the troubles he has with his brother James. Also, historians have stated that the “Dear Son” beginning of the work is a mere literary convention and that it does not make sense for Franklin to have started it in this way. After all, William was a middle-aged man by the time Franklin began writing in 1771, and certainly would not have needed the elder statesman’s advice (or had already heard it many times). William was also an illegitimate son, making the family recollections potentially piquing. Critic Andrea Tinnemeyer writes, “As Franklin himself points out, employing the metaphor of life as a manuscript, there are no possibilities to eliminate those sins (or errata) that he has committed, such as the siring of a son out of wedlock…Interestingly, it seems as though Franklin considered the telling of his tale, its commitment to paper and thus to posterity, as a means of atonement.” Tinnemeyer references other critics who suggest that since Franklin was obviously aware his son William was a prominent Royalist, he may have also been “seeking out insurance in the form of his son against any possible punishment for his own disloyal and rebellious behavior against the Crown.”
Critic William H. Shurr actually considers Part I a completely separate work, finding it true to the “Dear Son” opening and seeing the others parts as addenda: “Instead of a unified work, the reader has a long personal letter, a fragment of a ‘Treatise on Perfection,’ and then only the last two parts as consciously intended public autobiography.” The gap between the first and second parts, which is thirteen years, is certainly wide enough to account for a completely different mood and inspiration. The first part features colloquial, simple prose and is “filled with the kind of unsolicited advice and wisdom most fathers are probably guilty of offering.” There is a clear desire for William to approve of and even admire his father; sometimes there are parts directed to William alone, such as with borrowing money. Shurr sees another agenda, first wondering if the tale is to mollify his bastard son like other critics believe it to be, but then concluding that perhaps it was somewhat to rub his son’s nose in his illegitimacy. After all, things were not that good between the two of them in 1771, and there are certainly signs of hostility. The comments about the “low women," one of whom was William’s mother and frightened Franklin with the threat of venereal disease, is “hardly [a matter] seemly in a public document or helpful to a son now pursuing a public career in a society where gossip was treasured. They are insensitive –to say the least –even in the intimacy of a private letter.” Shurr concludes that at some point during the writing of this first part Franklin must have concluded that he actually did not need his son as insurance and was therefore able to be bitterer in tone and spirit. Franklin’s personality is a lot more complex than some are willing to concede, and duplicity, hostility, and bitterness were part and parcel of his charm and wit.
