Article of the Week The Self-Made Man and Autobiography (1450L)

Transcription

1 Instructions: COMPLETE ALL QUESTIONS AND MARK THE TEXT using the CLOSE reading strategies practiced in class. This requires reading of the article three times. Step 1: Skim the article using these symbols as you read: (+) agree, (-) disagree, (*) important, (!) surprising, (?) wondering Step 2: Number the paragraphs. Read the article carefully and make notes in the margin. Marks and notes should include: o Circle the key terms, names of people, names of places, and/or dates o Underline the author s claims o Underline relevant information Step 3: A final quick read noting anything you may have missed during the first two reads. Your marking of the text is part of your score for this assessment. Answer the questions carefully in complete sentences unless otherwise instructed. Student Class Period Excerpt from The Self-Made Man: The story of America s most pliable, pernicious, irrepressible myth By John Swansburg I ve always admired what my father accomplished, and how he accomplished it, while not quite sharing his confidence that his experience was repeatable, especially in our current economic moment. The yawning gap between the dearly held ideal of the selfmade man and the difficulty of actually improving your station in America, particularly if you re poor, made me wonder about the utility of the rags-to-riches story. Is it a healthy myth that inspires us to aim high? Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard they work? The very language we use to describe the self-made ideal has these fault lines embedded within it: To pull yourself up by your bootstraps is to succeed by dint of your own efforts. But that s a modern corruption of the phrase s original meaning. It used to describe a quixotic attempt to achieve an impossibility, not a feat of self-reliance. You can t pull yourself up by your bootstraps, anymore than you can by your shoelaces. (Try it.) The phrase s first known usage comes from a sarcastic 1834 account of a crackpot inventor s attempt to build a perpetual motion machine. I wanted to know how the self-made ideal got lodged so firmly in the American mind that even a finding that France France! is a better place to move on up has done little to diminish our sturdy belief in our exceptionalism. What I found is a mythology at once resilient and pliable, one that has been adapted by its purveyors again and again to suit the needs of the times. Benjamin Franklin is undoubtedly the original self-made man The story of the self-made man begins with Franklin. Though he was hardly the first man to rise from poverty to prominence, no one in America s short history had started

2 out so low and ended up so high. Franklin, the tenth son of a Boston candle-maker, became a world-famous scientist, an influential patriot and diplomat, and, not least, a wealthy man of business. But America s self-made story also begins with Franklin because of his talents as a writer. In the Autobiography, Franklin offered an irresistible account of his unlikely path to prosperity, one that would thrill later generations even as they misinterpreted it. For Franklin, succeeding in business had been a means to an end. The wealth he accumulated freed him to devote himself to loftier endeavors: science, public service, the pursuit of moral perfection. Franklin didn t set out to be the face of American capitalism, but in the decades after his death, that s what he became Franklin was undoubtedly proud of his rise from obscurity. Throughout his life, he would remind his correspondents of his humble origins by signing his name B. Franklin, Printer. (Ever the printer, in the Autobiography, and in the famous epitaph he composed for himself, Franklin described his mistakes not as sins to be repented but errata he d correct if permitted a second edition.) He was also proud of the role he d played in founding a nation where such a rise was possible. Yet Franklin s intent in setting down his life was not to establish himself as the founding father of bourgeois striving. He recognized that whatever happiness, virtue, and greatness he d achieved was predicated on his early success in business, which allowed him to retire at age 42 the midpoint of his life, it turned out and to devote his remaining 42 years to public service and moral improvement. He made room for his business affairs in the Autobiography, describing the qualities that had allowed his printing house to thrive, but lavished far more attention on his civic contributions (which ranged from founding one of America s first libraries to founding one of its first volunteer fire companies) and on his moral philosophy (recounting in detail his effort to better himself through the practice of 13 virtues). It was his success in these endeavors, more so than mere moneymaking, for which he hoped to be remembered.

3 Excerpt from Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin

4 \ Article of the Week 1. Answer the question Swansburg poses in the first paragraph: Is [the rags-to-riches story] a healthy myth that inspires us to aim high? Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard they work? Explain your answer. 2. Why do we hang on to Benjamin Franklin as the ideal for upward mobility? Why do you think we do not better remember the accomplishments Franklin wanted to be remembered for? Explain.

5 3. Compare and contrast Franklin and Gatsby. (How did they try to accomplish their goals? What were their ultimate goals? Etc.)