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Outliers Essay
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
AP Language and Composition

In Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers, his goal is to convince the reader that “people don’t rise from nothing” and that “ we do owe something to parentage and patronage.” Although certain people’s success requires prerequisites of talent and knowledge. I agree with Gladwell that it is not solely because of these talents that these people are successful. However, their success most often is dependant on one’s past good fortune. For example, when or where one was born and raised, one’s cultural background and family legacies, one’s schooling, and many other factors, create opportunities for success where these talents can be utilized. Although some people are thought to have risen from nothing or to have gone from rags to riches, the fact is no one is capable of creating their own success without the help of others and good fortunes along the way.
In this passage, a point that Gladwell points out is that success can be created by parentage and patronage, hidden advantages and opportunities, cultural backgrounds and family legacies. An example of the importance of one’s cultural backgrounds and family influence is the way we are raised. Our parents, as our first teachers have a big role in who will become in our lives; they teach us how to interact with other people, how to act in certain situations and how to present ourselves to others. The different religious and cultural backgrounds of our parents, and also the way our parents were raised have an enormous impact on the way our parents raise us. As a parent, the balancing of strictness, pressure, giving, loving, helping, and withholding, among other factors can be difficult, with the question being what balance is the best to raise a child. Because we are all raised in different ways everyone has different views on how to raise a child based on their knowledge of how they were raised. This proves that the way we are raised can make the difference in our

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