One quality Franklin finds impertinent to have that would make a person an ideal American is humility. In Franklin’s own life, he exemplifies humility through perseverance in establishing the public library in lieu of struggle and initial lack of popularity. Franklin states in his Autobiography “The present little sacrifice of your vanity will afterwards be amply repaid” in which he was referring to the difficulties he was having with gaining public subscriptions. Franklin states that “The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one’s self as the proposer of any useful project, that might be suppos’d to raise one’s reputation in the smallest degree above that of one’s neighbours, when one has need of their assistance to accomplish that project. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight, and stated it as a scheme of a number of friends, who had requested me to go about and propose it to such as they thought lovers of reading” ( Autobiography, Chapter 8). To accomplish his task, Franklin disregards the lack of popularity and strategically allows others to take credit for making the public libraries a success and popular among society, thus reaping the rewards from sacrificing his own vanity, and allowing the popularity of his own idea be dismissed from his name.
Franklin employs the strategy of sharing his success story through a personal narrative to persuade the reader to adopt humility as a strategy of success. Franklin spoke in first person to describe the struggle that he had underwent in creating the successful public library that was first met with lack of participants and hesitancy. However by sharing his personal strategy of humility, this lead his endeavors to be prosperous. In Franklins Autobiography he reaffirms this point in stating that “In this way my affair went on more smoothly, and I ever after practis’d it on such occasions; and, from my frequent successes, can heartily recommend it”. This can be a very powerful literary tool in convincing a reader that one is able to achieve great things by setting their ego aside, and in some circumstances allowing for someone else to take the credit, so that the task will be fulfilled. Often a first person narrative will be believed as truth, and many will be persuaded by what the author is stating.
Comments are closed.