The most important function of an autobiography is to give you an exclusive inside view of someone you admire. You trust that what they're telling you is candid, honest and heartfelt. We discover why Augustine gave up his harlot and converted to Christianity, for example. We begin to understand how a Greek like Libanius, who wouldn't even learn Latin, became good friends with the Roman Emperor Julian. Humor is also an important element that endears the authors to us even more.
Through the time line of her life, the autobiographer satisfies our desire to know where she was born, what her childhood was like, what her neighborhood was like. Through her own words, we experience what the times were like and how the environment, culture, mores and attitudes of her surroundings acted as a positive or negative catalyst.
A great autobiography is engaging to the emotions. Many famous people became famous because of their communication skills and storytelling abilities. They include definitive setting and detail. Their narrative features a well-defined cast of characters. We discover the friends, family and perhaps other famous people who influenced and mentored them. A good story has good dialogue, so it likely includes not only who these people were, but what they said.
Here we get to the roots of what sparked the writer; what opened his eyes; what makes him tick; what his vision of life was, and most importantly, what his mission was. The results can be extraordinary: Henry David Thoreau's vision and writings on civil disobedience inspired Mahatma Gandhi to lead India to freedom, who in turn inspired Martin Luther King to establish American civil rights, whose vision catapulted Bob Dylan and a whole generation into a new state of consciousness.
Our mission in reading an autobiography is inherently selfish. When we read about religious or spiritual leaders such as Pope John XXIII, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Harold Klemp and Paramahansa Yogananda; politicos like Fidel Castro, George Washington, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; social reformers like Malcolm X and Helen Keller; literary luminaries such as C.S. Lewis, Mark Twain, Annie Dillard and Roald Dahl; great scientific minds like Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Booker T. Washington and Nikola Tesla; or entertainers like Tony Bennett, Fred Astaire, Elizabeth Taylor, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Donovan, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Willie Nelson, Michael Jackson, Ozzie Osbourne and Eminem, we admire their character traits and talents, aspire to free ourselves from the everyday shackles of the world that bind us, and perhaps even be great, like them.