Each writer consistently associates the claims of his discrete individuality with those of a representative cultural identity, and in order to emphasize the sense of common possibility implied by such an association, each chooses to address his audience through a rhetoric of elaborately contrived simplicity.1 As David Levin observes, the movement from private to public standards of identity is the overriding structural feature of Franklin Autobiography.2 What gives this synthesis of democratic identities a cumulative validity and coherence is the attitude of self-conscious discovery with whi...

• Word Count: 348
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Graduate