Augustine’s Confessions is an autobiography from the 3rd century, and the deep lessons  are applicable to the situations of modern day. Augustine does a great job of dissecting his past wrongdoings, and teaching the reader a lesson from his own mistakes at the same time. One thing that Augustine did not put much focus on in this autobiography is the finer details about the world surrounding him. For example we are never given many details about his many long journeys from Carthage to Rome and Mila. 

If I was going to write an autobiography about my life I would have a very hard time trying to find things in my life that I think would be beneficial to a future reader. I would not want to, nor would I have the space to bombard the story with details about every aspect of my life and my environment. On the other hand, I would not want to leave the reader wanting to know a lot more about the world around me, like how I feel when I am reading Confessions. Some things that I would want to depict to the reader are how school systems worked in our time as technology was just starting to be more integrated into schools. I would  also want to detail what I see as the biggest political movements of my time like the fight for LGBTQ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the continual and justified fight for equal rights for all marginalized groups. I would also be forced to leave out a lot of aspects of my life that I do not think would be valuable for a person living hundreds of years from now. One thing that I would not go into a lot of detail about would be sports I played, even though they have taken up a lot of my life. Competitions have existed for thousands of years and I don’t see that changing, so I would not want to go in depth about something that I think they will already understand. Another thing  that I would not detail are some forms of media. I would include overviews of things like Netflix or social media like Facebook, but I don’t think they are that crucial to the overall value of my life.

Augustine’s Confessions does not provide a lot of historical information throughout its first six books. For example, Augustine had many long journeys that he never bothered to give much detail about.  Augustine chose to fill the pages with all the lessons he learned on his long journey to Sainthood. He does not tell a very complete story. Instead, he gives all the most important parts of his life, often jumping from event to event without giving information on what has passed or how long it has been. Although, through his lessons he still lets pieces of historical information slip through the pages to give the reader a glimpse of what the world was like in the 3rd century. 

One of the things that Augustine illustrates about the world was how the education system worked. As he was growing up he was taught, “the three R’s of reading, writing, and arithmetic” (Confessions, page 15). This is a helpful insight into what the people of this time period were being taught. Also, the subjects that were taught all the way in the 3rd century are still being taught today, along with a multitude of other new subjects. This information is helpful for the reader to make connections with the author and the world he lives in. Augustine gives small glimpses into the world around him like when he briefly talks of the routine tortures that happened all the time during his time period. This fact seemed so normal during that time that Augustine did not seem to care about whether this way of governing was good or evil. It was normal. Augustine may not have included some of these aspects on purpose. I think he did not include a detailed setting throughout the autobiography because he wanted the reader to be able to connect more with his lessons and not to be distracted from his lessons with the interesting setting and history that was happening around him. In order for him to include more details about his setting and the historical events around him he would have had to take away from his purpose of writing his autobiography. Augustine had a moral message, and he did not want to cloud his lessons with any extraneous details. Augustine did a great job of keeping his focus narrow.