Polly Baker Sympathy
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The Founding of Sympathy
In Benjamin Franklin's speech, The Speech of Polly Baker, Franklin establishes Polly to be a humble and common woman, seeking only to do the work of god in order to develop her as a sympathetic character. Polly initially establishes herself as poor and miserable woman. She even goes as far as to describe herself as a, “ poor unhappy Woman, who have no Money to fee Lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable Living.”(Franklin). From the beginning of the speech, Polly describes herself as a pitiful human being in order to dredge up sympathy from an otherwise unforgiving audience. This shows that Franklin uses the pathetic status of Polly Baker