More handpicked essays just for you.
Analytical essays on outliers, by malcolm gladwell
Readers response essays over malcolm gladwells outliers
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers includes a section based on the Bible's “Matthew Effect” and a self-fulfilling prophecy. This chapter elaborates on“the Matthew Effect” and how if anyone gives certain opportunities at the right time, their experiences will be furthered than others through training and more opportunities being opened to them. Gladwell touches on this using the example of hockey players given the advancement of only being born in the early months of the year and then those kids get trained exceptionally better than others for this simple reason of them being born in these months. It shows how society is simple-minded and always set to have an outcome, it’s not only random at this point, it’s always decided upon and furthered. Kids
or people having small opportunities, in the beginning, will always become better at what they’re doing because their education or training is more sophisticated than the others, just for these small differences. The self-fulfilling prophecy, in this sense, connects to the fact that the people who are given the better opportunities, take advantage of them and please themselves with these rewards, when in reality they might not be necessary when there could be better players born in November, as an example.This same concept of “The Matthew Effect” is shown in the topic of appearance inequalities, especially in a work environment. When someone is born looking a certain way, i.e. weight wise, skin tone, or just overall “beauty standards”, they are given certain places in a work environment. For example, Winnie Harlow is a growing model who at the beginning of her career, was discriminated against for having a skin condition called vitiligo, various/unique skin pigmentation. She was rejected by many agencies and people just because her skin pigmentations were different, but now she has become a growing supermodel, which would be outside of the normal “Matthew Effect”. In other circumstances, there are usually specific guidelines workers must abide by at their jobs based on their physical appearance to seem more “professional”, but some of these things are not possible for some people to change.
I found Gladwell’s first chapter of Outliers entitled “The Matthew Effect” to be both interesting, confusing, and perhaps somewhat lopsided. Based on Matthew 25:2, Gladwell simply explains, “It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given to the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.” (Gladwell 2008, pg. 30) The Matthew Effect seems to extend special advantages and opportunities to some simply based on their date of birth.
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
The chapter seventeen, of the autobiography of Malcolm X, is about Malcolm X’s experiences during his visit to Mecca to perform hajj He was a Muslim minister, a leader in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. In the beginning of this chapter, Malcolm X starts off by telling the readers that all Muslims must attempt the pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca at least once, "if humanly able".
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.
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Troublemakers” is an article in which he explores the way societies make generalizations. Malcolm explains how Ontario has banned pit bulls due to a boy being attacked and people viewing that one example to be enough to distinguish all pit bulls as vicious and bloodthirsty. He goes on to employ that all dogs even resembling pit bulls or that have some pit bull mixed into them have been banned as well, because anything that looks like a pit bull has now been deemed dangerous for the people in that society. Not only does Malcolm point out other ways societies generalize people, like racial profiling a terrorist, but he distinguishes how steps could have been taken to eliminate the threat of the pit bull but it seemed to just
Once in a while, it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. Gladwell believes that cultural legacies are powerful forces. Cultural legacies are the customs of a family or a group of people, that is inherited through the generations. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, Cultural legacies is something that’s been passed down for generations to generations. It depends on what type of legacies was passed that will affect a person. If a good legacy was passed down, someone can keep that legacy going by trying hard at keeping the legacies going. If a bad legacy was passed down; I believe that cultural legacies can be altered or changed, by good working habits, determination, and a positive mindset to succeed. Culture can affect either positively or negatively, but we have the power to turn our cultural
Aldous Huxley once wrote, “If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.” This is clearly a statement about public acceptance and tolerance of dissimilar people. Aldous’ beliefs can be seen in his book, Brave New World by two outcast characters, John Savage and Bernard Marx. Bernard and John are both outspoken about their ideas on society, but differ in their actions when faced with temptations.
Nowadays, snap judgment can be more authentic than the considered one. In the book named Blink, Malcolm Gladwell provides several examples of what he calls “thin-slicing,” which is using the minimal information to make a quick conclusion or judgment about certain situations or people’s characteristics. In the introduction of the book, Gladwell gives an example of J. Paul Getty Museum’s purchase of a sculpture, which later turns out to be a forgery. The museum buys the Kouros after 14 months on investing; however, after displaying the statue, experts express the abnormal of it and later find out that the sculpture is fake. In addition, the author introduces the idea of “thin-slicing” by mentioning the experiments that psychologist John Gottman
In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Gladwell gives his viewers many points on his understandings of where success comes from. In his introduction, he believes that the health of the community is a version of success, and he believes that that comes from the connections that the villagers had to their family, friends and neighbors. He also expressed his belief in chapter one that success comes from the small advantages one is born with, but can also be achieved from dedication and hard work. Gladwell used the Canadian Hockey League as a prime example of being born with advantages. He made the argument that the success that these hockey players had generally came from the month in which they were born. The Hockey League cutoff date is January
In the book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcom Gladwell defines an outlier as something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body and as a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample. Gladwell introduces the readers to the idea of outliers using Roseto Valfortore, a town one hundred miles south east of Rome. Gladwell considers Roseto an outlier because people there were simply just dying of old age, nothing else. Gladwell says “…Roseto--- a place that lay outside everyday experience, where the normal rules did not apply”(Gladwell 7).
To those of you that are willing to open your minds and consider the possibilities of new and different concepts about the way our society’s views successful people and the reasons behind their success. I invite you to accompany me, as I take a closer look into Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers and more specifically reviewing and analyzing the reasoning behind the logical, ethical, and emotional examples used by Gladwell in chapter two. While also acknowledging that the selected examples support the concept presented in the chapter regarding success and clearly show that Gladwell has chosen to rely on a more logical approach for his argument. However, he still uses an ethical and emotional aspect
‘’The tipping point’’ by Malcolm Gladwell, how little things can make a big difference explains why certain products or movements spread very quickly while others fade into the unknown. In the book ‘’the tipping point’’, includes fascinating anecdotes and many real life examples of how ideas spread and become popularized. The book overall is extremely easy to follow and is very educational. It’s organized and can draw the reader into the book and essentially agreeing with Malcolm’s main idea. While reading the book ‘’the tipping point’’, it offered me new perspective in seeing how everything comes together. Little things can make a big difference and the book was able to offer me a helpful perspective of considering human behaviours. Generally,
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell shows that it is possible to reach a point in our lives, where we explode. All the pent up emotion and anger finally gets released. Gladwell illustrates how small actions at the right time, in the right place, and with the right people can create a ‘tipping point’ for a person.“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire” (Page 10). The tipping point is a domino effect, one action impacts all the others that follow. This is like how one sick person can spread the flu, but, just like the flu, a spread of a product can cause a new fashion trend. Gladwell refers to a spread or a epidemic to the sale of Hush Puppies. In
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.