Reflection- Franklin vs. other Puritan writers

Ben Franklin as an author in comparison to the puritan writers we ahve looked at are very different. From their writing style to even what they write about it different. However, even some puritan writers vary compared to other puritan writers. Ben Franklin in my opinion was not a puritan writer. I enjoyed the autobiography of Ben Fraklin more than I enjoyed the other stories and things we have read this far because I think that Ben Franklin was a very intelligent man. I also think he was a good person. He has a very different writing style that is even a little bit weird compared to the other writers. Because is is so different it makes him stand out as a writer.

The biggest difference between Franklin's autobigraphy and the works we read prior by the puritans is that Franklin's autobiography lacks the presense of God in the writing. All of the previous Puritan writers were all about God. Ben Franklin was not a puritan though, so I understand why he would not be writing about God. The Puritan's life revolved completely around god, and everything that they did or said was for him. When life was bad, God was still praised. I do agree that we should praise god in both good and bad times, but they were a bit over the top obcessed with him. In Anne Bradstreet's Upon the Burning of our House, her house burnt down and she still praised god finding the silver lining in the situation. SHe was not the strongest Puritan of all the one's that we read, but she was stil praising god in the worst of the worst(Bradstreet 91). Mary Rowlandson was being held captive by the Indians and all she could think about was the positives and how being captures would turn out a good way in the end. God was doing it to her for a reason, and she was okay with it and just thanking him like being captured was normal. She knew God would never put her through anything that she was not able to handle(Rowlandson 83). Through reading the autobiography , we find that he did have some struggles in his life, but hey who doesn't? But he did not necessarily praise god for his hardships like both Mary and Anne did(Franklin 108).

Another difference between Ben Franklin and Puritan writers is the actual physical way they wrote. Puritans did not use the descriptive talk that Ben Franklin used. They just sort of got straight to the point unless it was about god. They could go on forever about how awesome he was. Franklin did kind of do a little bit too much describing about some things and he should of just got straight to the point. When he was talking about his stay with the nice lady, he went on and on and on about how nice she was and just kept describing about what she gave him (Franklin 107). I am not saying that describing is bad, but sometimes it is just a little boring to the reader because you just want to know what happened already!