Outliers Malcolm Gladwell

Words: 481
Pages: 2

In Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, the notion of success is thoroughly examined. Gladwell candidly states that prominent figures like Bill Gates and Bill Joy are not self made. He claims that no person who could ever qualify as “successful” managed to do so on their own. Sure, both of those men had humble beginnings and worked hard to reach the top. Nonetheless, the book asserts that every affluent person was the result of something Gladwell dubs the “steady accumulation of advantages” (#175). To affirm this, he formats the book in two main sections; parts one and two.
Part one focuses on the lifelong journey to success, saying that natural talent does not play as big of a role as one might expect. Gladwell instead emphasises the importance of practicing, revealing that “it’s the thing that makes you good” (#42) He continues on, citing Bill Joy as an example
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He discusses a study done by sociologist Anette Lareau, which investigates children of roughly the same intelligence but starkly different socioeconomic classes. Lareau found that upper class children had a sense of entitlement endowed in them by their parents. Lower class kids were less likely to put themselves out to the scrutiny of authority. The lower class kids could have blossomed just like their upper class parts if only they had, Gladwell remarks, “a community around them that prepared them properly for the world” (#112) The sense of entitlement that came so naturally to the upper class is what encourages people to go for what they want, and to not be afraid to stand out.
To conclude, according to Gladwell, no one becomes known by just their own hand. A special combination of parentage and patronage are needed, beyond just talent.Outliers: The Story of Success takes a crack at this combination in order to define it and to figure out what it is composed