Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell: An Analysis

Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers, a novel depicting success, provides different examples of how an individual can achieve success in every chapter of his book to show his audience that success, despite a variety of barriers, is in fact in our control. A very important chapter titled, “Marita's Bargain”, explains the flaws in today’s public school systems. He shows the problems with the solutions to fix them while showing the alternatives to the regular system such as the KIPP Program in New York. The KIPP Program (Knowledge is Power Program) is a new kind of middle school that selects students from less fortunate locations and uses unique teaching strategies to turn them around into fantastic learners. In the chapter, Gladwell is extremely descriptive by using visual words to paint the picture of the South Bronx in New York City. He describes the buildings that were built in the 1960’s as squat and bleak looking. Gladwell had an interest in this subject as it involves success, however he had no prior experiences to produce the piece. Gladwell establishes personal credibility through the use of knowledge, reason, and facts and figures. He comes across very knowledgeable on the subject presenting great data with excellent vocabulary. He is able to do this with no obvious bias as well. Gladwell shows authority because he is well known for writing novels that involve success. His intention is to teach and explain how schools need to change the length of vacation breaks

All children are not raised the same exact way. There are many different parenting styles, ranging from authoritative to neglectful parenting. Along with those many different styles also come many different opinions on which ones are better or worse for children. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book that essentially looks into many factors that contribute to people's successes. In chapter four, Gladwell writes about how different parenting philosophies impact how successful the children will be when they are older. Gladwell claims that there are essentially only two main parenting philosophies, “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth” (Gladwell 104). Gladwell goes on to also claim that between those two parenting philosophies, children raised from concerted

Prompt: Write an essay that defends or challenges or qualifies Gladwell’s assertion that “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and you use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires” (Gladwell 151).

The novel Outliers, aims to investigate the very thing we want for our family, our students, and ourselves. For most of our lives we have believed that with hard work, anyone can achieve success. That had to be the reason that poor immigrants like Andrew Carnegie and college dropouts like Bill Gates achieved unimaginable wealth. Most of us were taught that working harder than anyone else would lead to ultimate success.

In the prevalent view today, a great number of people believe that the building blocks of success are within the personality and quality of the person. Malcolm Gladwell asserts a totally different nature in his bestselling non-fiction book Outliers, he indicates that majority of success comes from external forces in which few people are granted particular opportunities and advantages that not everybody is broken by destiny (i.e. Date of birth, family background, money, etc.). Although he poses strong evidence to back up his arguments, Gladwell, somewhat neglected the value of hard-work, knowledge and determination in his book. Gladwell’s theory of success holds some legitimacy; even so his record is ultimately depressing about the possibility of success. The

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a book analyzing the traits and characteristics of the most successful people in human history, hence the title Outliers as it examines those who have stood out dramatically in society. Born in Fareham, Hampshire, England in 1963, Malcolm moved to Ontario, Canada at the age of six and spent his remaining developmental years in the country (Dphiffer). After graduating from Trinity College in Toronto in 1984, Malcolm began work for the Washington Post in 1987 where he stayed until 1996. Since then, Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker, and in addition to Outliers he has also written two more New York Times best-sellers, and is highly regarded in the field of journalism and writing. He has received numerous accolades for his work including being named one of the top 100 most influential people by Time Magazine, along

In chapter three of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discourses about IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and evidently convinced that IQs are merely digits measuring one’s intelligence that does not determine one’s chance of success. Gladwell describes the Termites, an experimental group created by Professor Lewis Terman, as having phenomenal intelligence, who unfortunately ended up earning incomes that are “not that good” (pg.89). Description-less for a minority of lines about their incomes, the short sentence served a purpose for creating an important point across readers. The important point is that no matter how brilliant a person may be, he/she might not end up successful and earning great sums. By this, Gladwell is offering readers advice that one

Outlier is defined as “something that is situated away from or classified differently from a main or related body” or “a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample”, which is the beginning to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. The meaning of outlier itself in relation to success symbolizes those who stand out with exceptional rates of success. The book does not necessarily cover how to become an outlier (in fact it first deams becoming an outlier is nearly impossible) but more which are the factors that have contributed to certain outliers in history on a broad spectrum of hockey players to the beatles to even the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates.

In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he uses repetitive story plots to challenge the minds of America’s today and Americas’ tomorrow. It excels the limitations of what the reader was questioning what made someone so intellectual for instants, Bill Joy or where they came from, Joe Flom. The compelling story Gladwell was telling of who are Outliers; the turning point for Gladwell was when he gave his opinion instead of someone else’s story.

In his book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell examines the reason why some people are anomalously more successful than others. One would normally think that success is achieved through intelligence, however Gladwell squashes that notion. Throughout his book, one sees that relying on only intelligence can sometimes be detrimental to one’s success, especially in chapters three and four, where one man (who possessed an extremely high IQ) was forced to drop out of college due to a lack of money and social skills. Gladwell argues that, while these outliers can seem to be more successful due to mere intelligence and skill, in reality, they have achieved it through a highly interlinked mix of background, practice habits, and legacy.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that hard work and practice has more value than “innate talent” (Gladwell 1) in an excerpt from Chapter 2 “The 10,000-Hour Rule” of his novel Outliers: The Story of Success. Although he acknowledges that talent can be a factor in success, Gladwell believes that a person’s choice to work hard is what ultimately determines their achievements. To support this claim, he alludes to famous musicians and cites psychologists and other scientists to establish credibility, with the attempt to convince the audience that hard work overrules talent. His passage has a very clear and academic tone, making it easy for the audience to understand and not get confused.

In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell attempts to prove that success is based on more factors than the general public believes. While hard work is important to the prospering of the very successful, the sheer circumstances presented to those individuals gave them a far greater chance of success than their peers. Through the use of statistical analysis, very well organized writing, and many quoted authority figures, Gladwell exemplifies his phenomenon very clearly with little ambiguity.

In chapter seven and chapter eight of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell effectively claims that acknowledging cultural legacies betters the chance of success. In chapter seven of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell entices readers on the topic of plane crashes in the aviation world, while commendably and credibly synthesizing the controversy around the question of how and why plane crashes occur.  When illustrating the terrible crash of Korean Airlines Flight 801 in 1997, Gladwell intricately describes the language, words, actions, and psychology of the pilots and crew members associated with the plane crash to better the authenticity of his claim.  Combining these ideas, Gladwell forms a theory that arguably proves to be true

In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the concept of success is reintroduced and retaught. Gladwell’s narrative style is richly immersed in great descriptive detail, which provokes interest as the reader relearns the idea of success.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell focuses on the cultural and societal forces that give rise to opportunistic individuals, which lead to their success. In the book, he attempts to answer the question, “What makes people successful while others fail?” He argues that instead of focusing on these individual’s intelligence, ambition and personality traits, we should emphasize their culture, family, generation, and experiences that brought up their success. To put it bluntly, success is not an innate ability. Malcolm shows that these people not only became successful because of their talent, but because of the opportunities they seized, their effort, and their timing.