Similarities Between Benjamin Franklin And The Great Gatsby

For this textual analysis I have chosen to compare The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to Jay Gatsby for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This comparison of Ben Franklin to that of Jay Gatsby will examine the way in which cultural factors such as morality, technology, and societal norms of their respective time periods affected their worldview and ultimately set the stage for how their stories are told and ultimately the outcome of their respective lives. It is my contention that Ben Franklin is successful man of his age brought about by the cultural theme of his time of hard work and strong moral character, while Jay Gatsby is ultimately destroyed by the cultural themes of his era of materialism and lack of integrity. The comparison will be done by …show more content…
First, let us begin with Ben Franklin in his early years as a boy. Ben Franklin was put into grammar school at the age of eight (Franklin 77). There he excelled at reading and was soon removed to do work for his father in making soap, and so on until he is ultimately indentured to his brother, James, in a print shop (Franklin 81). Considering the time of Franklin’s youth in the pre Revolutionary War, it is clear from his autobiography that hard work in America is instilled from a very early age. Much unlike today in the sense that it is nearly unheard of to hear of a boy merely twelve years of age, as in Franklin’s case, to go to work in a business. This demonstrates that America at this time had a profound view of the work ethic, not only of men, but of boys as well. The hard fought settling of the American colonies in the 17th century carried