Analysis Of Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell

In chapter six of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell persuades that cultural legacies remain for generations and ought to affect how one behaves in certain circumstances. To validate his statement, Gladwell began telling a story of Harlan, Kentucky, a town in a mountainous region where there resides two bickering families; Howard and Turner. The “county was in an uproar” (pg.164) and the families were finishing each other off. Gladwell then began claiming the factor that drove the uproar was the “culture of honor” (pg.166), meaning the culture around highlands are aggressive due to the need to protect their livelihoods. This reveals that future generation in the highlands will be trained similar to their ancestors in order to maintain survival. Also,

Chapter 6 of Matthew Gladwell’s book Outliers, there are illustrations of many family feuds. While the feuds were horrific, they were indicative of pattern which existed within the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areas. The region was seemingly plagued by a “culture of honor” (p. 167). Because of the ancestral heritage of the “Scotch Irish”, these mountaineers were willing to fight at the slightest challenge to their reputation (p. 167). This behavior results from the need to survive, and is strengthened by the clannish ways of the people. This inevitable violent way of life is correlated to the number of murders in the South, and the implication is these murders are personal, in the same way family feuds were in previous years. Moreover

Gladwell’s book Outliers is the most interesting book I have ever read. I say that because of the ideas that are presented and the way that he presents those ideas. He uses stories with characters to get the ball rolling of what he was to talk about. He then uses other books, professionals, and experiments to provide reasoning for his ideas. The chapter that I especially liked, and that I thought he did a good job of getting his point across in was chapter 6— “Harlan, Kentucky”. I believe in this chapter he did his best job of trying to get his point across which is, cultural background plays a bigger part in our way of living than we realize.

In the number one National Bestselling book, “Outliers- The Story of Success”, by Malcolm Gladwell, he conveys a message to the readers that our societies views of success are flawed. What do you think of when you think about “successful people”? I am sure a few words came to mind- rich, famous, accomplished, smart. An outlier is defined in the book as “something that is situated away from or classified differently from a main or related body” (Gladwell 3). An example would be the red apple we see on the back of this book.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, believes that working at something for 10,000 hours is required to achieve mastery and become a world class expert at anything. While this is a nice way of making it seem like anyone can be successful, it is simply not true. Some people will never achieve proficiency in a domain, no matter how much practice they put into it. There are a variety of factors that play into expertise besides practice and certain domains require much less practice than the magical 10,000 hour threshold that Gladwell established.

Malcolm Gladwell, through his work in Outliers, writes about extremely successful individuals, “Outliers” and focuses on success and failure. His main argument is that success is a mix of many different factors. It needs a look at what influences and plays a role in why individuals or groups of people thrive or fail. Gladwell collectively builds his argument through the examination of “success stories” in which self-made individuals have overcame great odds and have succeeded based purely off of talent and “merit”

Malcolm Gladwell, in his novel entitled, “Outliers,” explores the landscape of success and shows us that success comes from the culture that surrounds the successful , not their intelligence and ambition. Gladwell explains this through a series of situations and studies. In Part One, he discusses success as a result of timing, such as the month or year you were born. In Part Two, he focuses on cultural legacies and how they play a role in helping someone become successful. He unfolds the reasons why hockey players are not born in the latter part of the year, why the Beatles and Bill Gates were able to become so successful, and why Jewish immigrants were able to become successful lawyers and doctors. Gladwell disproves many beliefs by discovering

Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers defines an outlier as “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.” According to this definition, an outlier in society is one who achieves something highly unusual when compared to their peers. According to the theory Outliers presents, success is based not only on one’s individual merit, but on the accumulative advantages they gain throughout their lives. Seemingly arbitrary circumstances such as the time and place of one’s birth can affect the entire course of their life. Society’s outliers are produced from an extremely unusual set of circumstances that allows them to diverge from the paths of those around them. One such example of an outlier comes from F. Scott

Vince Lombardi, a great American football coach, and player, once stated that the “dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success”. According to Lombardi, hard work will get you to where you want to go, and many people would agree. In Malcolm Gladwell’s novel, “Outliers: The Story of Success,” secrets and misconceptions about success are exposed and explained. Gladwell was right in saying that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself...you can shape the world to your desires”, as evidenced by examples from the book itself, the successful career of Serena Williams, and my own personal story (Gladwell 151).

What exactly is an Outlier? Malcolm Gladwell explains to his readers in "Outliers" that an Outlier are "men and women who do things out of the ordinary." Gladwell explains to us that an in order to become successful, there are many factors that can lead to it including birth dates, community and culture, and legacy. He doesn't entirely believe that you can achieve success just from individual merit and hard work but that it takes the environment around you and opportunity to become successful. In the contrary, Gladwell writes a whole chapter titled, "The 10,000-Hour Rule" which he explains that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become successful in something. Then he mentions that it opportunity plays a part in this success, when speaking about The Beetles, and how they were giving an opportunity to play at a club for about ten thousand hours. If it wasn't for this opportunity that was given to The Beetles, Gladwell believes that they wouldn't be as who they are now and would have never been as successful and wealthy as they are now. Gladwell claims that social and economic background can determine whether or not a individual will succeed. This claim is false becaus a person who is wealthy can not be as successful as one who is not wealthy.

While movies and books provide society with examples of heroes rising from nothing, Malcolm Gladwell argues that heroes in the real world are successful because of their circumstances, their families, and their appetite for hard work, and through an analysis of his book Outliers and various other sources, it is made clear that this is correct. Gladwell starts his book by introducing how an individual’s appetite for hard work is influential to their success. In an article for the New Yorkers, Gladwell states that “the psychologist John Hayes looked at seventy-six famous classical composers and found that, in almost every case, those composers did not create their greatest work until they had been composing for at least ten years” (Gladwell). In his book, Gladwell explains that ten years of hard practice equals about 10,000

In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers he argues that outliers, people who have achieved success almost entirely by their own means through perseverance and hard work, are not possible. Gladwell claims instead that people achieve success primarily through the opportunities they are born with or are presented with throughout their life.

While the author, Malcolm Gladwell, does not dispute that hard work in a necessary component, we learn that many factors, lucky breaks, and some coincidences all occur in making high achievers into true outliers. We also learn that many of the richest, most famous, and most successful people in

Travis Roy’s presentation was one for the books. His story is inspiring, motivating, and touching. After listening to him talk, I realized just how blessed I am. I have a healthy, capable body that allows me to do pretty much whatever I want. What stood out to me the most of Travis’ presentation was his positive attitude. Even though he had been paralyzed, he made the best of it. He challenged all of us in the room to have a positive attitude no matter what we were going through. Someone always has it worse. A positive attitude can go a long way, without someone even realizing it. Travis pointed out how if he had not chosen to look at the bright side of things, he would be living a very sad, unfulfilling life. Life is all about the mindset

People with disabilities are capable of doing the same activity as a person who is perfectly healthy. A physical deformity should never define the outlook of an individual’s life. Jim MacLaren, a man who became disabled at the age of twenty-two, learned to live with his disability. Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah was born disabled and became successful. Jim MacLaren and Emmanuel Yeboah won many awards and inspired change for disabled people. The two men have different disabilities, but they both have made a positive impact on the world because of their disability.