Outliers The Story Of Success Essay

Malcolm Gladwell's, “Outliers: The Story of Success” illustrates the illusion and the blind luck of the “self-made man”. The idea of the self-made man has been alive and well in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people immigrate to the U.S. every year on the dream of a new life full of opportunity and subsequently, success. What Gladwell argues is that there is never any success without ample opportunity. There is no such thing as a real self-made man. Gladwell proves that there cannot be a self-made man, only people who took advantage of the opportunity given to them. There are many different forms of opportunity, for some, it could mean that they were born into wealth, for others it could mean that their families pushed them up that proverbial mountain. What this means to Gladwell is that people without these advantages could work just as hard as another person, only to be met with failure, opposed to that other …show more content…
Bush. Jeb repeatedly affectionately calls himself a “self-made man”, a title that many use for themselves. He even goes to say that his family’s wealth and power were a disadvantage. Jeb tries to argue that his countless opportunities as a result of his last name actually went on to hurt him. He believes that he crawled his way to success with nothing but his will and drive. This is hard to agree with, seeing as most people aren’t directly related to two recent presidents, and that seems like an obvious advantage. However, nobody is truly a “self-made man”. Everyone has opportunities that the next person might have, and they might have some that are intangible, such as the correct birth month, and some might be obvious, such as being born into wealth. These advantages could manifest as any number of things, but no successful person has ever become who they are without the help of another. The self-made man could never truly be made solely by