Title: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell Pages you’ve read up to this point: 1-68 Your response: Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers delves into the many factors and contributors that lie behind high levels of success, some including cultural background and opportunities provided at a young age. Through the frequent implementation of vast case studies, individual stories, and mathematical charts, Gladwell suggests that success can be narrowed down and simplified into a specific set of traits and skills. The author also introduces the idea of stereotypes, and aims to prove how the meaning and definition of “success” is severely scewed and profoundly wrong. The novel is structured in a unique and interesting way, as there are chapters and a multitude of …show more content…
The Matthew Effect is defined as “the effect of accumulated advantage, sometimes called the Matthew principle, is the tendency of individuals to accrue social or economic success in proportion to their initial level of popularity, friends, and wealth” (Wikipedia). To connect to the title of the chapter, Gladwell begins by explaining the story of the annual Memorial Cup Hockey Tournament in Canada. Gladwell writes, “Canadian hockey is a meritocracy. Thousands of Canadian boys begin to play the sport at the “novice” level before they are even in kindergarten. From that point on, there are leagues for every age class, and at each of those levels, the players are sifted and sorted and evaluated, with the most talented separated out and groomed for the next level.If you have ability, the vast network of hockey scouts and talent spotters will find you, and if you are willing to work to develop that ability, the system will reward you. Success in hockey is based on individual merit — and both of those words are important. Players are judged on their own performance, on anyone else's, and on the basis of their ability, not on some other arbitrary fact. Or are they?” (Gladwell
Throughout the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell focuses on using the rhetorical technique of pathos to aid his readers in understanding the formula for success. In one particular part of the book, Gladwell uses experiences and human problems as examples to support his idea that plane crashes and ethnicty are related and the greater idea that success is based on opportunity.
Malcolm Gladwell once said, “...people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.” The author, Wes Moore, of the book, The Other Wes Moore, is considered an outlier through the “Gladwellian” lens based off of Gladwell’s book, Outliers. Wes’s story demonstrates objectives that define him as an outlier with the contributions of where he’s from, his advantages, and also his attitude over his ability. These contributions therefore define him as an outlier through the “Gladwellian” lens.
Malcolm Gladwell, in the nonfiction book Outliers, claims that success stems from where you come from, and to find that you must look beyond the individual. Malcolm Gladwell develops and supports his claim by defining an outlier, then providing an example of how Stewart Wolf looked beyond the individual, and finally by giving the purpose of the book Outliers as a whole. Gladwell’s purpose is to explain the extenuating circumstances that allowed one group of people to become outliers in order to inform readers on how to be successful. The author writes in a serious and factual tone for the average person in society of both genders and all ethnicities who wants to become successful in life.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that there is no such thing as a self-made man, and that success is only the result of a person’s circumstances. However, throughout the novel Gladwell points out that your circumstances and opportunities only help you become successful if you are willing to take advantage of them and work hard. From a twelve year old living in the Bronx, to those who were born at just the right time to become millionaires, one thing is the same throughout; these people because successful because they seized the opportunities they were given. The advantages and opportunities that came from their circumstances would not be important if they had not grasped them. Every successful man is self made, because he has seized the
Gladwell narrates along biographical sections in the chapter and leads you through the lives of his “successful” subjects. He explains a cause of success and the effect it has on the outliers and their lives. He effectively asks rhetorical questions to spark readers’ interest in a phenomenon and then he explains the phenomenon using r...
Malcolm Gladwell is a canadian-english journalist, speaker, and bestselling author. In his bestselling book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell discusses success and what patterns correlate with it. He states that how much time you put into a certain activity, specifically 10,000 hours, can put you in a elite level of proficiency. This in turn can give someone the tools to allow them the ability to be successful. Using historical citations, patterns, and real life examples, Gladwell forms his 10,000 hour rule. Due to his knowledgeable yet calm tone Gladwell seems to show credibility. His intended audience could be people who enjoy statistics or people who want to be successful and find possible ways to do so. Gladwell uses a logical appeal to show the patterns he has found through his studies of success. He supports his claim with overwhelming statistics which back it. He also uses similes to help better understand how he can relate the patterns he has found for the elite in a certain activity to other things. Foil is probably Gladwell's best means of convincing the reader to his thesis of the 10,000 hour rule. He uses Foil to compare success and we define to legends such as Bill Gates The Beatles and Bill Joy. Overall Gladwell uses Logos, similes, and foils to support his claim of the 10,000 hour rule.
...cies for which Gladwell argue are strongly represented and undeniably convincing. Even without an acknowledgement of the rebuttals to his arguments, the author presents compelling claims that are successfully strengthened through the inclusion of specialist information, an appealing conversational tone and style of writing, and the initial attractions that begin each chapter. Just as Gladwell’s recipe for success does not adhere to conventional conceptions, Outliers does not remain within the typical expectations of academic writing. Not acknowledging a rebuttal, for instance, is ordinarily considered a lack of credibility; however, as Gladwell points out in Outliers, “This is a book about outliers … who do things that are out of the ordinary” (17).
In the book, groups of successful people are broken down and Gladwell compares their individual characteristics to see if there are any abnormal trends. He starts with talking about how the chance birthdates of a large number of professiona...
Malcolm Gladwell’s overall purpose of Outliers: The Story of Success is that success is largely determined by an individual’s socioeconomic and sociocultural environment, and individual ambition, effort, or talent, are less significant, contrary to the societal notions associated with success. In other words, success is not something that someone randomly gained; success is earned through opportunities that develop dedication, interest, and skill over time. By doing this, will one become an outlier, or “something that is situated away or classed differently from a main or related body,” (Gladwell 3) that distinguishes great from good and best from great, as exemplified by “The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that the and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.” (Gladwell 39) Gladwell also acknowledges societal norms such that “All of the fourteen men and woman on the list above had vision and talent,” (Gladwell 62-63) to assert hard work, ability, et cetera can lead to success, but a social environment that offers such opportunities immensely increases the likelihood of success.
Opportunities are interesting. Most of the time, they appear and then disappear before we even realize what’s happening. For me, a missed opportunity has mysterious powers. This thing that I wasn’t even focused on has the ability to drain my energy, make me eat lots of bad food, and then leave me convinced that it wasn’t good for me in the first place. I mean, what is that? Because more times than not, I find myself reliving the past. Going on to play the what-if game that has the ability to bring about more nostalgia than is probably healthy.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: the story of success. 1st ed. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008. 1-91. Print.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: the story of success. 2011. Reprint. New York: Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Co., 2008. Print.
For generations, only certain people have achieved success - they are known as geniuses or outliers; however, they did not obtain it on high IQs and innate talents alone. In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell, #1 bestselling author of The Tipping Point and Blink, reveals the transparent secret of success behind every genius that made it big. Intertwined with that, Gladwell builds a convincing implication that the story behind the success of all geniuses is that they were born at the right place, at the right time and took advantage of it. To convey the importance of the outlier’s fortunate circumstances to his readers, he expresses a respective, colloquial tone when examining their lives.
In Chapter 8 and 9 of Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell exams some of the ways that Asian and American students learn math, arguing that some of the principles in the US education system should be reconsidered. I generally agree with Gladwell’s point of view. I believe in two ways, students ' principal spirit and the length of students’ studying, the US education system leaves much to be desired, though an overhaul is in progress.
This essay will tell you about The Round Table! This will tell you of the history of The Round Table such as who was apart of it, how was it founded, what was the point of the table, what did the table do and where it was formed. The Round Table is as important as when it was first created as it is now in the present. Who was apart of the table? The main body of the table was King Arthur himself and his twelve knights which were the most famous of the knights other than Arthur.