Use Of Ethos In Malcolm Gladwell's 'Outliers'

In today’s society, what makes a person an outlier? How do people become outliers? In the novel Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, these questions are discussed and answered throughout the entire novel. The sole purpose of this novel is to discuss how some of the many people in today’s society and in the past can be defined as “outliers” and how they obtained that title. During the novel, the author discusses how people who are successful are only successful due a great opportunity, lots of hard work, and a good amount of luck. The novel is split up into 9 chapters and each chapter tells the reader about a certain person or situation that is defined as an outlier. The chapters then go into depth about how these people became outliers, or how these …show more content…
In the novel Malcolm has multifarious studies from well-known and trusted sources that provide evidence for Gladwell's purpose. One specific example of ethos in Outliers would be when Gladwell was talking about a study done to prove the fact that kids in the lower class are falling behind in our education system do to the lack of opportunities they have to learn in the summer. “These numbers come from a research led by the Johns Hopkins University sociologist Karl Alexander” (Gladwell 255). This excerpt would be an example of ethos because Gladwell is using a credible source to persuade the reader that students in the lower class are falling behind in our education system. The credibility of this study would later be used to described how a student in the lower class has been the opportunity to go to a private school that would increase her chances of escaping the middle class and being the first person in her family to go to college. This would prove the author's purpose that this student is not an outlier because she was born that way, she is an outlier because she has been given the opportunity to change her life and stand out among others, and she is taking advantage of that