In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines the lives of people who have achieved greatness in the world, to find out what makes them achieve greatness. Are there “secrets" and what we can learn from these outliers in order to become successful ourselves. Gladwell challenges our usual thoughts that the self-made man will succeed and proposes his own theory of how ordinary people become successful. While the book makes for an entertaining read, but not every argument of his is water-tight. In today’s society, a majority of people have come to think that the building blocks of success are within the personality and character of the individual.
To think of success is like monitoring a tree grow, the branches split into different paths one can take, each split is another opportunity to prosper and grow beautiful leaves like trophies. In the mind of Gladwell, the process of becoming successful is like a tree branch, if one starts off strong, more paths appear growing from the strong branch, and as goals are achieved, leaves grow to show wealth. Gladwell’s use of rhetoric through his engaging voice and credible tone, emotional concern, and various examples, supports his claim that all data follows the pattern that his thesis describes. Gladwell’s thesis supports one’s success being determined by a combination of supporting community, timing, and opportunities and not one’s talent.
In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.
In the book, Gladwell applies the term “outlier” to people who are “invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot”(Gladwell). An outlier mixes his or her natural talent along with timing, place, social status, culture, parents, environment, and other small factors to have a strong disposition to succeed. According to Gladwell, “success is the result of what sociologists like to call ‘accumulative advantage”(Gladwell). While not all people who
Gladwell utilizes anecdotes from many different people and deductive reasoning to support his claim that success does not come from hard work alone, but rather a combination of personal determination, opportunity, and legacy. The Outliers narrows down success by viewing it as two parts, opportunity and legacy. The author does this by examining those who fall outside of normal statistics. Rather than writing the statistical outliers off as something of another
Outliers: The Story of Success Review There were many things I could agree or disagree with Malcolm Gladwell in his work, and I want to hit them piece by piece. First I want to start off by making a simple agreement to his main point or theory that there is a combination to success which consist mostly of where you come from, and the amount of work you put into something. Two simple quotes that explain his theory "Practice isn 't the thing you do once you 're good. It 's the thing you do that makes you good" and "Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying".
Gladwell's studies reveal, “The reading scores go up by .26 points. When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session. The reading scores of the rich kids, by contrast, go up by a whopping 52.49 points. Virtually all of the advantage that wealthy students have over poor students is the result of differences in the way privileged kids learn while they are not in school…” (Gladwell 8)
The image is desolate. In a bleak, futuristic world, a man seeks comfort and solitude away from the prying eyes of his own droning telescreen, to commit a serious act of ultimate treason: thinking for himself. Winston Smith, an ordinary citizen in the glorious nation of Oceania, illegally obtains a small diary, which, curiously, leads him to commit thoughtcrime, despite the dire consequences that may arise. In the novel 1984, author George Orwell depicts a totalitarian dystopian society through the use of dreary imagery. By using language as evidence for sentence, Orwell creates differing, albeit similar, worlds within the beginning and the end of the novel, tying them both together in a flurry of matter-of-fact irony.
Gladwell in his piece Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted actively rebuttals the argument that social media can be a tool used for social activism. Gladwell undermines the authority many people believe social media to hold by pointing out the formula for social media is a large range of networking; not hierarchy which creates roles, jobs, and leaders (410, Gladwell). Gladwell continues to assert that this networking is held together by weak ties of fake friends, whereas he supports face to face interaction that sparks true connection and change (406). He further utilizes the example of the lost phone and bone marrow transplant to highlight his view that social change does not come from participation which “go fund me” and
I agree with Maxwell Gladwell’s statement about the effective writing on controversial topics. When one reads good writing, it's supposed to give a glimpse of what it's like to be in someone’s else head. Effective writing makes one engage, think, and feel what’s happening in a story. Good writing makes you engage by keeping the readers invested in the stories of the characters and context of the story. Also, it allows one to think more in-depth about the content they’re reading.
“Is a man who chooses the Bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has Good imposed upon him?” (Burgess, quotesgram.com). In other words he means that the person that does bad has more, Good inside than the person who is forced to do good. A Clockwork Orange and Fahrenheit 451 are both books about dystopian societies. Even though they are both dystopian novels they still have a lot of differences for instants free will excessive power and corruption.
In society today, many people have a fascination with how governments work with the people to run a country. People who live in countries like the US have the idea that citizens have the freedom to do whatever they want. On the other hand, citizens of countries like North Korea would definitely toss that idea out of their minds. There are many examples of this topic found in literature. One example, George Orwell’s 1984, focuses on a dystopian society where the government is all-powerful.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Million- Dollar Murray” he takes on the plight of chronic homelessness. He uses Murry Barr as an example of how much money is spent on those living in chronic homelessness. Murry Barr had the larges medical bill in the entire state of Nevada; “It cost us one million dollars not to do something about Murry.” Reported officer O’Bryan. The reason for this claimed is that it might be more cost affective to take the homeless off the street and give them a home.
Outliers, written by Malcolm Gladwell, is an informational book regarding the intricacies of success and how it comes to fruition in individuals. Outliers has served to teach students the means of being successful and the importance of seizing opportunities as they come. Personally, Outliers has changed my views of success in numerous ways. Before reading said book, I had always assumed people who were naturally talented or had specific privileges were the only ones who could get far. However, Gladwell’s writing has informed me that anyone, if they are prepared to work hard, can reach their goals.
In this way inequality becomes justified. However Bowles and Gintis argue that rewards in education and occupation are based not on ability but on social background. The higher a person’s class or origin the more likely they are to attain top qualifications and a top job. See Bourdon (position theory); Bourdiau (cultural capital); and Bernstein (language and class). For Bowles and Ginitis then, school can be seen to legitimize social inequality.
