Ritwik Deshpande - Week #10 - The Power of Biographies

(Source: YourDictionary)

Interestingly, before the POAS project in this class, I never really thought much of biographies. I thought they were boring, stagnant, and didn’t have much value because it was so easy to get information about someone. Literally, a simple Google search could answer any question I wanted about anybody, rendering a biography a relic of the past in my eyes. The requirement to read a biography for POAS was one that I dreaded, and I was just reading it to get it over with. In fact, I was planning on using evidence from my POAS book to the smallest extent possible while still maintaining the requirement.

Even while reading the book, I really did not enjoy it even though I had appreciation and respect toward my POAS. However, after reading the book and composing an outline for the paper, I realized just how useful the biography was. When I was writing the outline in class, the evidence and ideas just flowed through my head through the immense amount of information I had learned about my POAS’s life experiences. If I had just randomly Googled information about my POAS, instead of learning about him in a structured manner that is a biography, I wouldn’t have been able to do this at all.


This is when I truly began to appreciate the power of a biography. It is a piece of literature that truly embodies the life experiences of someone, and allows the reader to understand and learn from it. I grew a lot upon finishing my POAS biography, and I believe it was an excellent resource in both my research for the paper and my personal growth. After this project, I plan to continue to read biographies in my spare time, along with other genres of literature that I enjoy.

Comments

  1. Krish PatelJanuary 29, 2025 at 9:45 PM

    Hi Ritwik.
    I like how you included the POAS to be able to connect with us as the audience and readers better. By including it, you were able to grab my attention extremely quickly and made me relate to your claim that biographies carry a lot of power. I do agree with you that biographies are boring; however, I have grown to like my book Elvis: The Biography by Jerry Hopkins as I am curious to learn more about Elvis Presley, my POAS. I like how you also show how the biography helped you by comparing it to a simple Google search to show the difference that it made. I also enjoyed your conclusion as it ties together the elements that you had already said and connects your point to that of power and the influence that these biographies carry. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog.
    -Krish

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  2. Elina FanFebruary 5, 2025 at 9:28 PM

    Hi Ritwik, especially when I was young, I used to think that biographies were boring–simply just a list of facts. My perception of it changed as I grew older, especially after reading the autobiography of Anne Frank, one which I thoroughly enjoyed. For my POAS, I found my biography to be enjoyable as well, especially since it was a person I wanted to do more research on, not simply a book that I was forced into reading. With the recent surge in the past years propelling forward the development of the Internet, I feel like I get most of my information from various websites, but incorporating quotes from both my biography and sources online helped me create a more complex paper that included multiple opinions and perspectives, not just one. I agree with your positive sentiment about reading biographies because they are so educational, and I like them if they tell a story instead of simply listing facts. Reading my POAS biography definitely helped me learn so much more about my person that I could not achieve through simply looking through sources online.

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  3. Nidhi MukherjeeFebruary 5, 2025 at 9:54 PM

    Hi Ritwik! I truly relate to your point about the usefulness and entertainment of biographies. Just like you, I rediscovered my love for reading through my well-written POAS biography, especially for biographies. While they can seem a bit blasé compared to the other, more exciting texts and literature we read, I feel like there’s almost a sense of serenity that comes along with its predictability.

    I remember when I had to read my first biography (emphasis on had), I absolutely dreaded it. Of course it was for an English class when I was in 6th grade or so (something about a boy who made a windmill). I despised every minute of it, from the readings in class to the close reading assignments. Despite that, I couldn’t help but sort of be on the edge of my seat for the ending as I rooted for the main character. Maybe it was because of the rhetoric. Maybe it was the rollercoaster of a plot. Regardless, I did enjoy the book—though I would have never admitted to it.

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