Malcolm Gladwell's David And Goliath

In a very inspiring book by Malcolm Gladwell entitled “David and Goliath”, the author expresses many different stories involving various situation. In the second and third chapter of this book, I found out that the stories are quite difficult to understand because I cannot see the relevance of the stories to each other. At first, all of the stories seem to be unrelated to each other because the storyline of the stories is totally different. How can a story about raising children in a wealthy surrounding, ancient artists and enrolling in a prestigious university can be related? It will be quite difficult to relate all these stories at the beginning. So, the process of understanding the message or the main idea implied by the author is very difficult.

As I have finish reading, I started to recall back about the story that I have read. I try to find the similarities between the stories and ponder about the message that the author tries to implied to its reader. After revising the stories that I have read, I started to realized something in common about all those stories. All the stories have the same message, which is the author trying to say that it does not mean that making decision to be a small fish in a big pond is the best one. But instead in certain condition, it is better to become a big fish in a small pond because it have a better ending compared to becoming a small fish in a big pond. The portrayed message can be understood from the ending of the ancient artists story who think participating in Salon competition is the best option to show their talent and the story of Caroline Sacks who made the wrong decision in furthering her study. Therefore, for future reading I believe that to understand this type of article, reader must read the stories to the end with questing why does the author write stories that irrelevant or unrelated to its topic. Then at the end of the stories or article, reader should start recall or revise back what he or she has read. Next, reader should start thinking about the stories or article storyline to really understand the stories or article as a whole. From that point, reader can ponder about the main point or the idea that the author tries to imply.