An Analysis Of George Gladwell's 'Outliers'

Success by Chance? In Gladwell’s opening chapter of Outliers, he begins to tell us about where success comes from. Right away he makes clear that people do not come from nothing, to be successful, all on their own. He does this because you often here sports broadcasters say, “John Doe, came from absolutely nothing, to become this sports All-Start.” Gladwell uses the analogy of the tallest tree in the forest. He says that that tree does not get to be the tallest on its own. Gladwell reminds us that the sun was not blocked from that tree. That tree had no root damage from rabbits. That the tree was spared from a lumber jack. That tallest tree had help from many aspects of nature. Gladwell starts with that analogy because many people do not know what goes in to being successful. People do not become successful without the help of someone or something. To prove this, Gladwell goes on to tell us about Canadian hockey. He shares with us a story about a junior league Canada. A discovery by Roger Barnsely, a Canadian psychologist, was made about the birth dates of the kids on these top tier teams in hockey. After close examination of the roster, Barnsely, found that a large majority of the kids on these teams were born
Whether success is by chance, is up to you to interpret what chance means. If chance means that the kids born earlier in the year were lucky enough to be born at that time, then yes, success comes by chance. The way I interpret is that success does not come from chance. Yes, these kids were born earlier in the year, therefore, were given a better chance. But through that chance, they were given better opportunities and the help from better piers to become successful. The question, “does success come from chance?” could really go either way. It is all about how you interpret the question. But when it comes down to it, you cannot become successful on your