Franklin V Hawthorne
In the excerpts from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the two authors utilize language to display their varying views on sins and imperfections of a person. Franklin's own experience and the analogy of the speckled ax portrays his acceptance of sins and flaws as a part of life with the virtue of hard work as a balance; on the contrary, through his allegory of the flickering light within the forest and purity of Pearl to Hester's sin, Hawthorne shows his reluctance to recognize anything below perfection. Franklin allows leeway in life and assumes the best qualities of everyone; as opposed to Hawthorn's pessimistic opinion about helpless hypocritical audience with tainted characters. Through the virtue of hard work, Franklin views the best about his audience while receiving flaws as normality within one and perfection as unattainable. Franklin relates his experience of "difficulty" of "acquiring...order", diction of "faulty character", and the analogy of "the speckled ax" to prove his lighthearted outlook on petty mistakes with a foundation of hard work behind them. First, to convince the reader of tolerance of mistakes, Franklin relates his expe
rience about his own "difficulty to acquire order." The struggle of the author displays the irrationality of perfectionist expectations since everyone enfaces "difficult(y)" in life and flops. The strategy of telling a personal story shows the awareness of the necessary amount of work essential to overcome "difficult(ies)" in life and the inevitable occurrence of flaws even from him. The diction of "acquiring" displays the effort put forth to achieve the set goals in order to balance out the flaws. The "difficulty" justifies these lapses in accomplishment and makes them forgivable through the attempt of improving. This leads to Franklin's fear of "contenting" one with "faulty character." The author states that excessive mistakes lead to a demoralized "character" which taints the society of its hard work. This "character" procrastinates working to the point of impossibility of cleansing oneself from erroneous overall life. By not just "faulty", but the combination of "faulty character", the writer assures the reader of the happenings of mistakes and occasional "faults" but yet the ability to keep a pure "character." Finally, Franklin compares the extremes of perfection and the moderate state of imperfection in the story of the "speckled ax." Here- the "speckles" represent the expected occasional flaws in a person, and the "edge" of the "ax" represents the flawlessness and purity of the overall "character." The "grinding" t
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Approximate Word count = 964
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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