Chris Langan Character Analysis

According to Gladwell, “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all” (Gladwell 285). Successful people such as Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Joe Flom are considered Outliers because they have achieved outstanding prosperity and fame. According to the traditional concept of success, they rose to the top against all odds because they were more talented than their competitors. The notion that innate talent is the root of success, however, is a fallacy. All outliers have had help getting to the top.

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

“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.

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

Randy Pausch. Who is he? What does he stand for? The day he gave the last lecture... His last lecture he only had months to live. He packed a lot of lessons into his lecture. The claims he gave that stood out were to be optimistic, to be determined, and to take risks.

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.

In many instances, those who are successful are made out to be some sort of separate breed, those who were innately able to perform remarkable feats that others, no matter how hard they tried, simply could not. Through this exhibition, many people view success as an elusive feature that only a select few can obtain. This theory is the main inspiration for Malcolm Gladwell’s exploration of success in Outliers: The Story of Success. In the book, Gladwell analyzes not only those who are successful, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, J.R. Oppenheimer, and Joe Flom, but what path led them towards becoming exceptionally skilled. This extremely in-depth analysis of successfulness forms Gladwell’s layered theory of what creates success, and his attempt

Success is measured differently by every person and each and every culture. The journey to success in most cultures, however, is generally idealized in the same way: one person working harder than everyone else to achieve his or her goal with their own merits as their only advantage. In Outliers: The Story of Success, the author, Malcolm Gladwell, argues about how wrong that ideology is and the truth behind successful people. Throughout his guide, Gladwell employs the help of many argumentative techniques to convince the reader of his message.

Becoming successful is what most people aspire to be. Most people fantasize the dream house, car, and having the dream job. Even though success is viewed so highly, not everyone can be successful. Malcolm Gladwell explains that idea throughout his book Outliers. Gladwell’s chapters contain endless amounts of evidence that support his claims exceptionally well. But, Michiko Kakutani, a critic for New York Times, exposes Gladwell’s evidence as unreliable and unconvincing, and upon further research, Gladwell’s faults grew deeper. Even though Gladwell provides an extensive amount of evidence, that evidence is one-sided and relies on suggestion.

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).

In his book Outliers: the Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell discusses successful people, and what it is in their lives that make them successful. While many believe that it is one’s intelligence and personality that allows them to succeed, Gladwell argues that it is the environment they live in. The author provides numerous examples that support his argument, including the people of Roseto who rarely die of heart disease, sports players born at a certain time of the year that are highly accomplished, the importance of culture in airplane pilots, and many more. Out of all the various people doing extraordinary things described by Gladwell, a certain individual caused me to stop and think. Christopher Langan is known as the smartest man in America. With an IQ of 195, Langan is a clear example of what is referred to in Gladwell’s book as an outlier. His cognitive abilities are far higher than than that of the average person, who possesses an average IQ of 100. Langan should be a highly successful man, but he isn’t. Chapters 3 and 4 of Outliers explores why Langan, who is possibly the most intelligent person in the world, has accomplished nothing more than what an average person will accomplish in his or her lifetime. This inspired me to further examine people like Langan, and why they weren’t as successful as they were expected to be.

In Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, his central premise is that success is not obtained the way most people think it is. We are often told that success come from sheer luck, or a triumphant rags-to-riches story. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of many successful outliers such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, The Beatles, and many more. He breaks down each story and points out what actually made that persona successful. While breaking down the story her also introduces the reader to what he believe are the actual keys to success. In the book he talks about The Matthew Theory, The 10,000 hour Rule, Practical Intelligence vs Analytical Intelligence, and Demographic Luck.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, he portrays many stories of success. He writes about many situations that produced being successful. Jeannette Walls wrote a memoir, The Glass Castle, about her crazy upbring. In doing so, she wrote about her success story. Her story proves some of Gladwell’s theories.

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