Analysis Of Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

The legacies people inherit from their families act as personal psychics that influence their futures and explain the reasoning behind the choices they make. Malcolm Gladwell, author of nonfiction book Outliers: The Story of Success supports this concept of how legacies influence people and the choices they make. He coins this concept as “cultural legacies” and defines it as: “powerful forces that play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them,” (175). Gladwell explains the cruciality of the cultural legacies in people’s success, decisions, and how these legacies influence how people function. Furthermore, these legacies remain intact in importance to the person’s life and relevant

The couple that started with nothing in the unfamiliar nation and began to sell aprons in New York City with Regina’s skill in sewing and Louis’s talent in sales (149). This business blossomed into their own company of garments after immigrating to America from Hungary (149). Furthermore, the Borgenichts brought lessons home to their children that were critical for getting ahead in the world(145). One of these lessons was to practice: “meaningful work, work that has complexity, autonomy, and a relationship between effort and reward,” (150). Gladwell explains the concept of cultural legacies– the moral and behaviors that are passed down from generations to generation– to show how vitally important these legacies are in people’s lives and how they impact their opportunities to

Stone writes about three essential functions of family stories– to pass on the family’s standards, to identify family characteristics, and coping strategies. The first of the three functions is the standards of the family since the family act as the “first culture,” teaching people what their family values and their opinions on certain situations like marriage and illness, mental or physical (Stone 384). The second factor is the family’s characteristics and their traits that bind them together, which act as the family member’s confidence boost (384). Furthermore, this boost makes them value themselves more than the next family, so that the family members contently remain together (384). The third factor is influencing how families cope; these “teaching stories” tell each family how to function outside of the family (385). Furthermore, they usually highlight the bad features of society and juxtapose them to the family’s worth, so the elders give the younger generation coping strategies to function in society the best way they know (385). These three factors have an impact on people’s personalities and their futures because how a person assesses a situation leads to opportunities. Both authors