David and Goliath Underdogs, Misfits, and The Art of
Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell states in the Introduction that David
and Goliath is "about what happens when ordinary people confront
giants." By giants, he means "powerful opponents of all
kinds". By sharing a variety of profiles of remarkable individuals, he explores
two ideas:
1. Much of what people consider valuable results
from lopsided conflicts, because the act of confronting
overwhelming odds produces "greatness and beauty"
2. We often get these types of conflicts
wrong, because giants' apparent strengths often are sources of their
greatest weakness, and because being the underdog can change people
as
being the underdog creates opportunities for them and educates
them.
In the remainder of the Introduction, Gladwell
shows that the story of David and Goliath has come to represent the
archetype "improbable victory" tale only because we have failed
to understand the events and characters of this story. We have come to
see this battle as a mismatch with an unlikely outcome because we
only view "power in terms of physical might". However, a careful
consideration of the conflict would reveal the advantages that David had going
for himself: nimble swiftness over lumbering strength, and adept
projectile hurling over up-close fighting, and eagle-like vision over
blurred vision.
In Part One, Gladwell shares several stories to
show the consequences of the error we make in reading David and
Goliath - of having a too "rigid and definition of what advantage
is." He also uses the stories to reveal "what it takes" to be the
sort of person who doesn't, like David, "accept the conventional order of
things as a given."
In this vein, he tells the stories of Lawrence
of Arabia and Vivek Ranadive. The former used his knowledge of
the desert and surprise attack to help a rag-tag Bedouin tribe to defeat
the much mightier Turkish army, while the latter used a game-long
full court press strategy to coach a small and untalented girls
basketball team to stunning victories over much taller and skilled
opponents.
In a great chapter on what he terms the
"Inverted U effect", Gladwell shows that an advantage can ironically become a
disadvantage. The Inverted U operates as follows: on the left side,
"doing more or having more makes things better"; however,
then you hit a "flat middle, where doing more doesn't make much of a
difference". Finally, you arrive at the right side, where doing or
having more makes things worse.
The two examples he gives of the inverted U are wealth and raising children, and class size. In the case of the latter, he presents evidence and testimony that very small classes are just as
The two examples he gives of the inverted U are wealth and raising children, and class size. In the case of the latter, he presents evidence and testimony that very small classes are just as
dysfunctional as very large classes. He
concludes, "The inverted U curve reminds us that there is a point at which
money and resources stop making our lives better and start making
them worse." (68)
Gladwell also devotes a chapter to another
example of where bigger and seemingly better doesn't always work to people's
advantage. This example has to do with the relative advantages
of attending a modest university or college as opposed to attending a
prestigious one. Here, Gladwell argues that something called
relative deprivation creates a Big Fish-Little Pond Effect (80) at
mediocre colleges that gives middling students a decided advantage over
students in Harvard-type colleges where even very talented
students compare themselves to brilliant top-achieving students,
find themselves wanting, and become discouraged. "The
big pond takes really bright students and demoralizes them." (90)
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| The Inverted U Effect |
In Part 2 of David and Goliath, Gladwell
investigates the notion that disadvantages can sometimes prove to be assets.
He terms such phenomenon "desirable difficulties".
(102). He uses several profiles of people to demonstrate that hardships can
drive some people to become smarter, stronger, or operate with more
abandon and a greater sense of freedom.
He shares the remarkable story of David Boies as
an example of the powerful compensation learning that can result
from a disadvantage. Boies, despite suffering from dyslexia, became a
highly successful trial lawyer. His inability to read
effectively drove him out of necessity to, instead, acquire knowledge through
effective listening thus resulting in his becoming a skillful
listener able to probe the testimony of people in court.
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| David Boies |
Emil 'Jay' Freireich, whom Gladwell presents as
an example of strength-from-difficulty, had an abysmal
childhood - he lost his father at a very young age and was virtually
abandoned by his mother as a boy. Despite these hardships - in
fact, because of them, he developed the fortitude and perseverance to
become a hematologist who developed breakthrough treatments for childhood
leukaemia. Like Londoners who developed courage from the experience
of remote misses during the Nazi bombings of that city,
Freieich's hardships built him up rather than knocked him down.
Then there is Wyatt Walker of the American Civil
Rights Movement, who despite being a part of the "underdog"
oppressed black minority in the southern states, used a no-holes-barred
trickster-like approach to goad the bigoted white establishment of the
south into behaving in such a reprehensible way that it gained support
for the Movement.
In the third and last part of the book, Gladwell
looks at the limitations of power. He makes the point that
power only has its intended effect when it is legitimate.
Legitimacy only exists when authority is predictable and fair and the people
asked to obey it have a voice in it.
He shares the story of
Rosemary Lawlor, an Irish Catholic wife and young mother who lived in Belfast during the
clash between the British Protestant establishment and the Irish Catholic
minority in Northern Ireland. Her joining the protest along
with thousands of others, despite the vastly superior and resolute British
army, shows "that when law is applied in the absence of
legitimacy", it produces opposition, not obedience.
Lastly, Gladwell compares the response of two parents to the murder of their child. The first, Mike Reynolds, responded to the murder of his daughter in California with an understandable cry for retribution through a crusade to institute a get-tough-on criminals policy called Three Strikes whereby a mandatory 25-year sentence was imposed on anyone who committed the same crime 3 times. The other, Manitoban Wilma Derkson, chose to forgive. Gladwell argues that while the latter David-like approach had lasting impact, the former Goliath-like expression of power ultimately failed because it lacked legitimacy. Although crime rates in California were lowered for a period of time
following the inception of Three Strikes, instances of violent crime increased in some areas of the state.
Lastly, Gladwell compares the response of two parents to the murder of their child. The first, Mike Reynolds, responded to the murder of his daughter in California with an understandable cry for retribution through a crusade to institute a get-tough-on criminals policy called Three Strikes whereby a mandatory 25-year sentence was imposed on anyone who committed the same crime 3 times. The other, Manitoban Wilma Derkson, chose to forgive. Gladwell argues that while the latter David-like approach had lasting impact, the former Goliath-like expression of power ultimately failed because it lacked legitimacy. Although crime rates in California were lowered for a period of time
following the inception of Three Strikes, instances of violent crime increased in some areas of the state.
