This study will compare and contrast the American authors Benjamin Franklin and Dale Carnegie from a biographical standpoint. The study will take the position that literature is the expression of a unique individual and can best be understood through a study of the author's life, the physical and emotional circumstances under which the work was written. In the case of Franklin and Carnegie, this biographical context proves most helpful in understanding their written works.
Both Franklin and Carnegie wrote their most important works at crucial periods in the evolution of the nation, and one can argue with reason that those works were shaped by their times. Specifically, Franklin wrote at the beginning of the experiment of nationhood, and his work reflects those dynamic, confident and experimental times. Carnegie, on the other hand, was heavily influenced by the Great Depression, and his work reveals a man determined to work hard and focus on practical goals (much like Franklin) in order to make the best of available opportunities in trying times. Both Franklin and Carnegie can be fairly described as "positive thinkers" who wrote trying to influence others to take action in order to implement such positive thinking.
Franklin's childhood in a large family played a significant part in both his later life and in his writings:
The tenth and youngest son in a family of seventeen children (he was the fifteenth), he was born in a colonial Boston in 1706. His father was a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler who had left England twenty-three years before (Wright 1).
One is fairly safe in assuming that as the youngest son and fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children (several of whom died young), Franklin was psychologically in a world where he had to fight for attention, where he had to learn to associate with a wide range of personalities. The incredible array of writings which Franklin would go to develop, including the i...