Opportunity: The Defining Factor For Outliers And The Story Of Success

The purpose of Outliers is to inform an audience on how the so called “successful” people we always hear about usually achieved such heights through the help of others, setting, and opportunity. In addition, Gladwell wanted to rid us of the inaccurate perspective on outliers that society provides: “Bill Gates was successful because he was very smart”. Instead, he argues that Gates’ success can be greatly attributed to the era he was born in and the resources surrounding him: “But what truly distinguishes their histories is not their extraordinary talent but their extraordinary opportunities…. ‘I was very lucky,’ Bill Gates said” (55). Gladwell’s points out this phenomenon through many different people; however, does not undermine the fact that successful people were not made by hard work either. Throughout the text, Gladwell intends to make it a point that although it is true that, for example, that the tech giants we know of today were born in the golden age of the 1950s, they all had one trait in common; 10,000 hours of practice: “he’d (Bill) been programming practically non stop for seven consectuive years... way past ten thousand hours” (55). Thus, Gladwell aims to prove that success is based upon a mixture of both given opportunity and practice, with a higher weight on opportunity because it guarantees that practice. In Part 2 of Outliers, Gladwell attempts to prove an association between cultural legacy and success, adding one more factor into the mix. This hypothesis was confirmed when during Chapter 7, in which Gladwell affirmed that Korean language itself was one of the main culprits that caused the low safety rates of Korean Air. As soon as English was standardized amongst the airline, safety rates shot up: “He believed that if the Koreans were honest about where they came from and were willing to confront those aspects of their heritage that did not suit the aviation world, they could change…. An opportunity to transform their relationship into work” (219). According to Gladwell, culture, setting, community, and lastly, opportunity (entailing practice) are the main defining factors for successful outliers, meaning that our societal perspective on them is incorrect.

Throughout Outliers, Gladwell uses two main strategies to convey the text’s purpose: literary and rhetorical devices. Since Outliers is a nonfiction work that uses real life examples, for Gladwell to use these strategies in his commentary is essential for communicating his thoughts. The reader has probably heard of Gladwell’s examples before, so the strategies make it easier for he/she to bridge the gap between their likely inaccurate previous perspective on outliers and Gladwell’s argument concerning them, which coincidentally, relates back to the purpose of the text. For the whole of the book, Gladwell uses symbols, motifs, and metaphors to help tell a story about each outlier he provides insight on. There is a recurring metaphor in each chapter comparing each person to “the tallest tree in the forest”, in other words, an outlier. Although this analogy does make sense to the reader, Gladwell wants to rid us of this analogy and introduce his motif instead: “The tallest oak in the forest is the tallest just not because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, and no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling... This is not a book about tall trees. It’s a book about forests” (19-20). Similar to the “tallest tree”, Gladwell uses the “forest” to symbolize that it is the community that empowers the person who achieves an unusual amount of success in life. Defined as the following motif, “The Ecology of Success” aims to prove that an outlier is the product of specific societal factors. Parallelism is a rhetorical device that uses similar sentence structure to emphasize equality, and Gladwell relies on this device frequently when offering his commentary: “ They were tracked and tested, measured and analyzed”, “..... marriages followed, illnesses tabulated, and psychological health charted”. By utilizing parallelism, Gladwell affects readability and makes his text easier to process. In Part 1 of Outliers, each chapter is structured in the following order: narrative, case study, exemplification, and commentary. Along the way, there are literary devices added in order to help the text flow so Gladwell’s commentary can come off as warranted. In “The Matthew Effect”, for example, the reader is first introduced to a Canadian Junior Hockey Championship scene with the help of imagery. Gladwell then shifts focus toward something peculiar about each player- they all have the same birth month. At this point, the reader would probably be intrigued by this phenomenon, which is when the case study on Canadian Junior League teams is presented to them. Finally, Gladwell can confirm many different examples of this phenomenon and now is able to offer his commentary on the topic. This structuring format gets the first part the text purpose across: One, showing the reader that successful outliers are cultivated in a certain way (case study), and two, proving that our initial perspective on them is incorrect because the facts are plainly in front of us now. In Part 2, Gladwell adjusts the structure to remove the case study part since cultural legacies cannot be tracked quantitatively, the same way birthday months can for example. In addition, there is simply no need to include plain facts anymore, because he has already got half of the purpose across. Instead, the reader is presented with a heavy narrative and commentary but no exemplification; cultural legacy is specific to a group of people so Gladwell cannot warrant an exemplification of it. This structure works better for conveying that cultural legacies affect success because unlike the first half of the purpose, Gladwell’s job is just to prove to the reader one scenario in which culture affected an outlier’s success.; if he does this, the second part of his argument (purpose) has come across. Outliers is structured differently based on what part of Gladwell’s argument the reader debating upon, and it is up to the audience to determine whether or not his strategies were effective in getting his point across.

Outliers is a text that strives to dissuade the reader from the societal perspective on successful outliers, and instead, enlighten the reader with facts, analysis, and commentary that proves outliers are not necessarily extraordinary geniuses but actually individuals raised in a certain way that guaranteed them opportunities in the future. Beyond this point however, Gladwell makes it clear that by understanding the true meaning of success, there are future societal implications that may greatly affect business, athletics, economics and education. One potential area of interest would be education outcome if summer vacation and age cutoffs are adjusted. In chapter 9, Gladwell brings up a strong point concerning the education disparity between wealthy and poor kids in terms of reading strength: “When it comes to reading skills, poor kids learn nothing when school is not in session” (258). Conversely, rich students experience about 200 times more growth than poor ones (52.49 pts vs 0.26 pts). This data and outcome analysis might be useful to school districts, for example because they can enact ways to lessen this gap, like providing reading assignments to do over break that are mandatory. Reducing summer vacation, or cutting it out entirely would lead to even better gains, as sociologist Karl Alexander points out: “Alexander, in fact, has done a very simple calculation to demonstrate what would happen if children of Baltimore went to school year-round. The answer is that poor kids and wealthy kids would, by the end of elementary school, be doing math and reading at almost the same level” (259). Apart from education, the lessons learned from Outliers can also be applied to personal success, namely, the 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell never fails to mention that each outlier discussed had 10,000 hours of practice (of their expertise) under their belt by the time they became successful. Similarly, if an individual wants to be the best at something, he/she should strive to attain these 10,000 hours because it increases their likelihood to become successful, even if the individual is not an “outlier” as defined by Gladwell.

An author uses quotes to illuminate the meaning or to support the arguments of the work in which it is being quoted. In Gladwell’s case, the quotes affirms and solidifies his argument while also making it easier for the reader to comprehend the point. Throughout the text, there are a few quotes that leave a lasting impression on the reader, which helps show how our societal perspective on outliers is incorrect. In Part 1, Gladwell makes his argument clear and condenses it into the following statement: “So far in Outliers, we've seen that extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity. In this chapter, I want to try to dig deeper into why that's the case by looking at the outlier in its purest and most distilled form--the genius. For years, we've taken our cues from people like Terman when it comes to understanding the significance of high intelligence. But, as we shall see, Terman made an error. He was wrong about his Termites...” (76-77). In a way, the reader is Terman; in that they followed the definition of a successful outlier that society gave us, an individual who possessed extraordinary mental ability. Gladwell has already shown us that there is more to success than talent, and now intends to rid us of the notion that outliers are just geniuses, when in fact, they are not. This quote allows the reader to plainly see Gladwell’s purpose of the text, and points out just how wrong we (the general public) were initially. Although the aforementioned quote above deals with Gladwell’s main argument, there is a variety of other quotes that are more nuanced, such as the following: “Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder” (Page). Again, Gladwell affirms that the top performers (outliers) did not get there on innate ability; they still have to work exponentially harder than the rest to become the best (10,000 hour rule). The way an individual is able to get 10,000 of practice under their belt is if they are given the opportunity, which is not common to us all. This helps explain why every individual with high IQ is not an outlier; yes, they might possess the aptitude, but a significant portion of them lack the opportunity to practice and cultivate their skills. At the end of Outliers, Gladwell leaves the reader with the story of Marita, and affirms the most important qualification of an outlier: “Marita doesn't need a brand-new school with access to playing fields and gleaming facilities. She doesn't need a laptop, a smaller class, a teacher with a PhD, or a bigger apartment. She doesn't need a higher IQ or a mind as quick as Chris Langan's. All those things would be nice, of course. But they miss the point. Marita just needed a chance. And look at the chance she was given! Someone brought a little bit of the rice paddy to the South Bronx and explained to her the miracle of meaningful work” (269-269). Throughout the book, the reader was constantly reminded that only privileged individuals from affluent backgrounds are the most likely to experience success; what Gladwell suggests now is that opportunity is the defining factor, as Marita, an underprivileged student, can succeed with the opportunity KIPP provides to her.