“Shore Narratives” and Self-Help: Thoughts on Samson Occom and Benjamin Franklin
The first portion of this week’s readings came from the “Shore Narrative” of Mohegan pastor and teacher Samson Occom. His conversion to Christianity as a teen marked a turning point in Occom’s life—he committed to becoming literate in order to study and spread Christianity. After a time of apprenticeship with Reverend Eleazer Wheelock, Occom would spend the rest of his days advocating for the rights and well-being of Indians, and trying to bridge the gap between the culture he came from and the faith he came to embrace. You might expect that Occom’s identity as a Native American would help him relate to those he ministered to, but that apparently wasn’t the case. Occom claimed, with some regret, that he couldn’t “influence the Indians so well as other missionaries.” Why Occom felt this way isn’t clear. But the disappointment Occom seems to express might stem from the compromise that he made between white and Native cultures. Attempting to be in the middle of two worlds may have kept him from feeling completely welcome in either one.
Then we moved on to a more famous name—Ben Franklin. At several points, Franklin’s writing radiated an attitude that felt exhaustingly arrogant. It reminded me of one of those bland, one-sided party conversations that you’d kill to get out of—a conversation that keeps going simply because the blabbermouth believes that everything he’s got to say is both essential and exciting. There’s no denying that Benjamin Franklin was an incredibly smart guy, and that our modern concept of America draws a lot from his ideas and experiences. But there’s a reason Franklin says “no one of our natural Passions [is] so hard to subdue as Pride,” and that’s because he was susceptible to it, too. The fact that Franklin was hugely admired as a thinker probably led to the assumption that everything he had to say was a revelation—even when his records tended more towards tedium.
I was talking to my roommate this afternoon about Ol’ Ben. I mentioned that Franklin’s autobiography, especially his section on monitoring his own virtues and vices, reads like a prototype for the self-help book: usually secular, fairly simple, and cheerily confident in the human ability to improve. I think that the qualities of these self-help books (including Ben Franklin’s) are distinctly American. The do-it-yourself spirit, a practice-makes-perfect approach, a desire and commitment to do the “right thing.”
There’s a lot of, well, value in those values. But it can also lead to stubbornness, frustration, inequality. I think that’s the difference between the narratives of Samson Occom and Benjamin Franklin. Here we’ve got two examples of men following their convictions, trying to put their skills and education to use. But privilege (race, class, etc.) can go a long way in boosting those efforts. And we end up believing what we’re told about ourselves, for better or worse, and that influences the way we live.
Anyway. Occom or Franklin: who would you rather talk to at a party?
Works Cited
Franklin, Benjamin. “The Autobiography, Part Two.” 1784. Lauter, Paul ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Wadsworth, 2006. 983-998. Print.
Occom, Samson. “A Shore Narrative of My Life.” 1768. Lauter, Paul ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Wadsworth, 2006. 870-876.
