Student

English 203

Week 2 Response

20 August 2002

The Purpose and Affects of Reading

Benjamin Franklin, in The Autobiography, and Jonathan Edwards, in Personal Narrative, speak both of reading but their approaches to this activity are distinctly different in the terms of cause and effects concerning taking up texts. They have such contrary opinions of what the purposes of the written word are that they appear to speak of wholly different things in spite of the fact that it is actually the same physical task.

Franklin has an extremely utilitarian approach to reading. He says that “From a Child I was fond of Reading, and all the little Money that came into my Hands was ever laid out in Books” (189). He then speaks of his method of selling the books that he had finished reading to purchase fresher ones, demonstrating a fondness for the consumable and immediate value of the written word. Of his early becoming familiar with his father’s religious books, he says he has “since often regretted, that at a time when [he] had such a thirst for Knowledge, more proper Books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolves I should not be a Clergyman.” This is another demonstration of his valuing reading for the practical end to which it will bring him.

Edward’s mention of reading deals with religious texts only. When he says that he “felt a harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet and powerful words” (180) and that he could be found oftentimes “singing over…words of Scripture” (178), he is demonstrating his valuing of texts for their ability to enliven in him some personal and usually intangible goodness. They were “a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world” (179)—something that removes him from the practical matters of Earthly life and transports him to the spiritual realm of ultimate meaning and heavenly aims.

Franklin reads (and writes) to secure his position on the soil of profitable American life as Edwards sings his transporting song of heavenly “sweetness”.