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“David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” is a non-fiction book written by Malcom Gladwell, a Canadian journalist, author and public speaker, and was published on October 1st, 2013. This book’s purpose is to focus on the probability of improbable events to happen. It analyzes situations where one outcome is favor over another which makes it quite interesting to read as it gives a better to the audience idea of how the improbable happened. In order to analyze how Gladwell uses the “They Say/I Say method” I have chosen the introduction chapter which simply tells the story of the fight between David and Goliath and Gladwell’s explanation on the outcome of the legendary confrontation. I believe Gladwell expects us to know this famous story of David and Goliath as it is known worldwide, however, he goes through details and provides his own point of view about the fight that I have never known before and I found that truly interesting.
Gladwell quickly gets us going by introducing the location of the action and tells us what is happening in the Valley of Elah. He reminds us the famous fight between David and Goliath and summarizes the arguments about that fight, especially the ones saying that he has no chance of success against this giant because of the height and strength difference which allow us to understand the chapter’s topic of defeating giants while being an underdog. Gladwell also cite what the historian Moshe Garsiel said “To the Israelites, this extraordinary spear, with its heavy shaft plus long and heavy iron blade, when hurled by Goliath’s strong arm, seemed capable of piercing any bronze shield and bronze armor together” to explain why none of the Israelites wants to fight against Goliath. As he sees David determined to fight; the king Saul gives him equipment to at least have a chance to fight but he refuses and starts running towards his target. At this moment people starts to worry because he has no weapon but only a stone thrower and nobody believes that this can take down the giant. Goliath being huge and heavy expected like everybody else a close range but he got shot by a stone right in the forehead. David beats Goliath and liberate the population from the Philistines. In this chapter Gladwell get us current on the conversation as well because he succeeds to compare this story to situations where people from nowadays are currently in when he says that this book is about “what happens when ordinary people confront giants. By “giants” I mean powerful opponents of all kinds- from armies and mighty warriors to disability, misfortune and oppression”. We feel concerned about poverty and oppression because those are currently happening in this world and this show how he get us involved in this discussion.
After analyzing the story and consulting experts, Gladwell responds to this thinking that everything about it is wrong. Indeed, he offers evidences to support his argument such as the effectiveness of David’s weapon, he says that in good hands those stone throwers can do some devastating damages and to prove it he cites the work of the ballistics expert Eitan Hirsch who says that “a typical size stone hurled by an expert slinger at a distance of thirty-five meters would have hit Goliath’s head with a velocity of thirty-four meters per second- more than enough to penetrate his skull and render him unconscious or dead”. Gladwell also mentioned Goliath’s weaknesses that the people could not see starting by his extraordinary height which might have been the issue when he had to move and his bad sight.
In this chapter, Gladwell is trying to transmit a message that sometimes “giants” biggest strength are their biggest weaknesses. This is important to his audience to understand why sometimes underdogs defeats giants and the biggest meaning here is that sometimes what made the strength of somebody or something turns out to be the thing that makes them weak as well. In this chapter Gladwell gives us different examples to compare with the story of David and Goliath such as the epic fight between Titus Manlius and Gaul. Gladwell makes the connection between the two fights because Manlius is also young and considered as the underdog against Gaul but somehow finds a way to come out victorious of this confrontation. He also uses the example of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the history who suffered from acromegaly and compared him to Goliath who might have had the same disease which would explain the limitation in his movements.
To conclude, we can see how important an argument analysis is as it allows the author to check if his argument makes sense and prepare evidences to support it. This type of exercise is important to get better at reading instructions, evaluating the quality of the claims, conclusions and underlying assumptions or simply thinking about what needs to be added to the argument claimed. We can learn all of those skills by practicing argument analysis which is interesting.
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