The Other Wes Gladwell Analysis

Audience: Outliers answers the unanimous question about those who become successful and “what they’re like”, “what makes someone successful?” or “what are successful people like?”. Gladwell directs his book towards an extremely broad audience. He talks about financial success, musical success, athletic fame, and everything in between, interesting everyone because who does not want to be successful? Outliers teaches lessons that are beneficial to people of all ages, and shows the readers what it takes to make it to the top.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, he depicts certain situations that created success stories. In Jeannette walls’ The Glass Castle, Jeanette is raised in a crazy and poor family that gives her no chance for success, but she is able to overcome her family’s history. In both the Glass Castle and Outliers, Jeanette Walls and Malcolm Gladwell develop a central idea that people become successful based on the their families cultural legacy. Gladwell believes that the advantages given to people at birth is their cultural legacy and will go on to affect how their success in the future. However, Jeanette Walls’ life negates Gladwell’s belief as her parents legacies completely set her up to fail but she does the opposite.

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).

Gladwell uses the example of basketball like he mentioned in the previous chapters. This new basketball analogy has to do with height of the players. According to Gladwell, “Once the basketball player is tall enough, then we start to care about speed and court sense and agility and ball-handling skills and shooting touch.” (Outliers. Pg.

In Outliers, Gladwell’s main argument or claim is that the way people initially see success and intelligence, should not just be the individual itself, but where and how that individual became who they were. Gladwell highlights the fact that “People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage” (19) and that outliers don’t “sprout from the earth” (269) but are made because of various factors such as age, race, where they were born, and the environment they grew up in.

b.In “Outliers,” Gladwell asserts his voice on how success does not happen by hard work alone, there are underlying factors: “We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and which the world in which we all grow up and the rule we choose to write as a society doesn’t matter at all” (33).

In Blink by Malcolm Gladwell presents and creates very fascinating terminologies to describe split-Second processes that human mind undergoes to make important decisions. One of the term that he uses in Blink is “thin slicing”. Malcolm Gladwell defines this term as “the ability of our conscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slice of experince”(23). What this means is your brain is able to “subconsciously gathers the necessary information for sophisticated Judgments”(23) from previous experience. In Blink Gladwell presents a lot of examples to make you better understand the meaning of thin slicing and when it takes place. Also In are lifes we use thin slicing in daily basis but we do not know when thin slicing

Malcolm Gladwell insists throughout his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, that the recipe for achievement is not simply based on personal talents or innate abilities alone. Gladwell offers the uncommon idea that outliers largely depend upon “extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies” (Gladwell19). According to Gladwell, successful men and women are beneficiaries of relationships, occasions, places, and cultures. The author draws on a different case study in each chapter to support a particular argument concerning success. Despite his indifference and suppression in regards to counterarguments, Gladwell’s claims are effective for many reasons, including through the accounts of experts, tone and style of writing, and the

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

In the book, Outliers, the Story of Success, Malcom Gladwell discusses “outliers” and uses many examples of success. This book expresses the many ways in which “outliers” are different from the “ordinary.” Gladwell explores the factors that influence and help people in their journeys to success. The factors expressed in this book include: their culture, family/parents, their background, and especially their personal experiences that have had major impacts on their life. Gladwell stresses that it’s not only about a person’s hard work for the success, but also about the things that helped them to grow and succeed in the first place. He uses many examples of people who are considered to be outliers and their stories of success and what helped them achieve that success.

Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell 's examination of what makes some people excessively more successful than others. These "outliers," as he calls them, are commonly thought to possess talent and intelligence far above that of the average person, but he challenges this popular belief by looking at the background of some notable outliers.

Many people view success as merely hard work; dedicating oneself to something completely. Although the recipe for success involves this type of commitment, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, opened up a new perspective. Although Gladwell states, “....If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151), he adds that many other things affect one’s ability to succeed. In society today, individuals tend to look at the big prize instead of the path that led them to it. It was very interesting because many stories about success involve time and perseverance, but rarely luck. Outliers gave a refreshing and unique way of looking at how goals are really reached. While the book was in the 3rd person point of view, it was very entertaining because with every chapter came another story that contributed to Gladwell’s overall idea. Throughout the book, Gladwell purposely went into explicit detail to push readers to further visualize and picture themselves in the shoes of the “outliers”. His friendly tone and his narration of anecdotes help captivate the reader. Although his style of writing feels slightly informal, Gladwell is very sincere and wants the readers to understand the misperception of success. In doing so, Gladwell separated the book into two parts; Opportunity and Legacy. By dividing the book into two parts he gives the readers two viewpoints to the overall idea of success and links them

Is it coincidental that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy and many other multi-millionaires were all born within a span of 3 years? Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, suspects that there is something more behind this occurrence than just a simple coincidence. He asserts that there is no such thing as a self-made man and success does not come from natural talent, rather it comes from extraordinary opportunities and hidden advantages. In Outliers, Gladwell attempts to debunk the myth that people are successful because of themselves, and not because of other factors. Even Malcolm Gladwell acknowledges that passion and hard work are required to succeed. However, he believes that this passion and time to put in the work would not be possible without the aid of extraordinary opportunities. Gladwell prepares a firm set of logical arguments, including the advantages of birth dates, cultural legacy and family backgrounds, to guarantee that his audience will be convinced of his conviction.

Lastly, Gladwell incorporates the audience’s interests to appeal to them in an emotional and engaging method in the subject of the argument, success. The goal for many is to be successful in their specific craft, and even from the title Outliers: The Story of Success Gladwell advertises his own story of success, and the audience believes if they follow the methods that successful people use then they will be successful too. Gladwell gives testimonies of people that would be predictably successful but never made it far due to not having a community to support them to open opportunities. He describes Chris Langan’s lack of credibility and success despite having a higher IQ than Albert Einstein and before he lets Langan describe a typical day

“There is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success” (Gladwell 18). In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell is trying to convince his audience that they misunderstand how people become successful. Many believe one only needs hard work and determination in order to achieve success. However, Gladwell complicates this idea by explaining that hard work and determination is not how people become successful and instead, it is all about the opportunities one is given that decides if he or she is successful or not. Gladwell uses the rhetorical appeals of pathos and ethos in order to persuade his audience to accept his idea of the process of becoming successful.