Bird And David And Goliath Analysis

The books Bird by Bird and David and Goliath, by Anne Lamott and Malcolm Gladwell respectively, provide their readers with many new ideas and ways of thinking about the world around them. They also allow for certain opinions to be created or changed, and are powerful tools altogether. Because I have learned to look at things from multiple perspectives, and not to always rely on my first instinct, I will be rationalising both sides of Thomas Hardy’s statement. “A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experience of every average man and woman.” Storytelling is such a broad and infinite form of art that what Hardy implies simply cannot be completely true.
This is the major goal of David and Goliath. Gladwell worked towards making his book special by doing just that- challenging the way people look at basic and complex advantages and disadvantages. “If I’d gone to The University of Maryland, I’d still be in science” (Gladwell 63). Because Caroline Sacks decided that she was guaranteed to do better at Brown, a much larger and more prestigious school, she eventually dropped out of science altogether to pursue easier undertakings. She was a genius, sure, but then again so was the rest of her class. So she dropped out, which is a result which would never have been likely to happen at another, smaller school. What Gladwell intends to show his readers here is that we do not always understand what is and what is not advantageous. That simple lesson could easily change the lives of thousands of people, and that is but one of the many stories and lessons he uses in his book. This is true value in a novel. This is what makes things exceptional, and this material is why Hardy believed anything short of it was useless. Why wouldn’t he think that? Within a week, I learned to look at the world in an entirely new way, and that is a priceless piece of knowledge that I have received through