If a person chooses to write an autobiography, they must feel that their life, or an event in their life, is significant enough that it must be shared with others. The author must believe that someone else can learn from their experiences. With that in mind, an autobiography would be primarily focused on the events in an author’s life that shaped him to be the person he came to be. This would urge a writer to comment on their surroundings, focusing on how it affects them personally, and not so much on the specific characteristics of the environment.

As a person who grew up in the 21st century, it is interesting to think about what I may put in an autobiography, and what I may choose to leave out. When something is very prevalent in one’s life, it is easy to assume that everyone has just as much knowledge on the matter as you do. I can imagine it may feel silly to give an in depth description of everyday things such as social media or fast food restaurants, because so many people nowadays have an instagram or facebook and see a McDonalds every time they drive to work. I feel that things such as cell phones and cars would naturally fall into my stories, but I probably wouldn’t explain how I use sticky notes and an electric blender to make smoothies. Small things such as these seem so common and unimportant to our lives, but may be interesting to people who are 500 years too late to know what a post-it is. While I cannot possibly explain everything in my life to a reader, it may be more interesting to leave some room for speculation anyways. For example, if I explain that I went to an all girls high school where I wore a uniform everyday and went to mass, readers may infer that there were many different forms of education besides the typical public school.

Saint Augustine’s novel, Confessions, is a critically acclaimed work that is still studied today through many different lenses. It is a work of theology, as it follows his journey through Catholicism and to sainthood, a work of literature, studied for it’s complex descriptions and beautiful dialect, and also a historical text, examined for it’s perspective of life in the third century. Because it applies to so many different academic categories and he probably did not write it with the intention of being a historical document, it is not a surprise that he left out many details about his daily life. We got a glimpse of things such as education, and how his early education focused on learning the three R’s of reading, writing, and arithmetic. These three noble subjects are still taught today, but are certainly few among the many more which students are exposed to nowadays. It does not go unnoticed that he doesn’t learn about natural science. This could be due to the lack of knowledge surrounding the subject during that time. He also remarks on how he and some friends stole pears and fed them to pigs as a form of amusement. Little anecdotes such as this give readers a look into simple things people may have done back then for fun; However I wish he had included more details about human relationships. Did kids have many friends outside of their families? Were communities tight knit? The author focuses on including facts about the time that he feels would be interesting and amusing, but sometimes the most fascinating facts are the ones about the small things in life, such as what he ate for breakfast or what kind of transportation he used. He also focused on things that are timelessly relatable, so as to connect with readers. Augustine comments on his mother’s grievances when he went to Rome, leaving her behind: “As mothers do, she loved to have me with her, but much more than most mothers; and she did not understand that you were to use my absence as a means of bringing her joy” (82). In saying, “as mothers do,” the author makes the assumption that readers of any time period, whether it be 10 years after he wrote it, or 1700, can relate to the idea that mothers do not like it when their children leave them. Relatable points like these have continued to draw readers in for centuries, helping the author continue to share his story with others.

Ultimately, Augustine did a decent job of including a balanced amount of implied facts about his life with room for readers to speculate, but I would have liked to learn more about his daily life and the environment around him.