Outliers Rhetorical Analysis Essay

In the book, Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, the author is challenging our views of how people become successful. He is saying that to get to where you want to be you can’t rely solely on hard work or determination. It takes much more than that, something that many of us don’t get; opportunities. If you want to be successful, you need a series of opportunities that present themselves to you at the right time, to put you ahead of everyone else. He proves this idea in chapter two by using the rhetorical appeal of logos and ethos. The author also utilizes three different narratives of people who have received opportunities in their lives, which put them on the path to where they are now; Bill Joy, The Beatles, and Bill Gates. Gladwell’s main rhetorical appeal in chapter two, which is named The 10,000-hour rule, is the use of logos. The 10,000-hour rule states that in order to become extremely successful at one thing in life, you would have to have practiced whatever that may be for 10,000 hours. Furthermore, he says that you have to have some sort of opportunity that others do not get, in order for you to be able to put in that many hours. A neurologist, Daniel Levitin, says, “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of …show more content…
It is clear that all of these narratives convey the fact that these individuals happened to be in the right place at exactly the right time. That is not to say that they weren’t extremely talented, they just had opportunities that put them ahead. Of course, there were several other individuals who had extreme talent just like Bill Joy, the Beatles, and Bill Gates. However, they were not lucky enough to be in the right place at exactly the right time. Therefore, they were unable to achieve high levels of prosperity, stardom, or