Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in David and Goliath, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Convention and the Status Quo
Hardship and Resilience
Conviction, Morality, and Empathy
Summary
Analysis
In the 1860s, Impressionist painters like Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro had trouble showing their work to the public. This is because the art world of 19th-century France centered around a yearly exhibition called the Salon, which took place at the Palais de l’Industrie. The only way to gain respect as an artist was to have a piece in the Salon, but the jury that decided which paintings would be displayed had very high, specific standards. Because the Impressionists didn’t conform to the traditional style of painting, they found it nearly impossible to have pieces accepted for the Salon. And when Renoir and Monet finally did have pieces accepted, they were taken down six weeks into the show and moved to a dark back room, where they were hung with paintings “considered to be failures.”
Gladwell’s focus on the Impressionist painters and their fight to be accepted by the Salon follows his examination of Hotchkiss, another elite institution. The Impressionists desperately want to display their work in the Salon because this is the only path in their society toward fame and recognition as artists. If, however, readers consider this alongside the idea that a school like Hotchkiss is universally respected despite its incorrect assumption that small classes benefit students, it’s apparent that Gladwell will most likely challenge the validity of the Salon’s prestige, questioning whether or not it’s as beneficial as the artists think to have a painting displayed in the Salon.
Themes
The Impressionists frequently gather at Café Guerbois, where they debate whether or not they should keep submitting to the Salon. What they want to decide, Gladwell says, is whether they should create their own show, thereby becoming “Big Fish in a Little Pond” instead of continuing to fail as “Little Fish in the Big Pond of the Salon.” Eventually, they decide to put on their own show, and it is because of this decision that their work is now lauded and displayed in the world’s most famous museums. Gladwell notes that this illustrates an important notion—namely, that people often assign too much importance and reverence to what they believe to be “the finest institutions.” It’s not often, he argues, that people break from convention like the Impressionists did. Nothing, he adds, highlights this dynamic more than the way people decide where to attend college.
Before deciding to break away from the Salon, the Impressionists are like every person who unthinkingly assumes that an elite school like Hotchkiss is better than other schools with slightly larger classes. Prestige and reputation, Gladwell intimates, often manage to interfere with the public’s ability to judge the actual merit of an institution. Thankfully for the art world, the Impressionists eventually recognize that they’ll be better off forging their own way, thereby ignoring the status quo and opening themselves up to new advantages—after all, nobody will hang their paintings in a backroom at their own show, so putting on their own show means that the public will actually have a chance to see their work.
Themes
Gladwell introduces readers to a woman named Caroline Sacks, who recalls her childhood as one full of science and wonder. As a young girl, Sacks enjoyed identifying bugs and various animals, and she cherished the idea of becoming a scientist. She excelled in high school, graduating at the top of her class. While trying to decide where to attend college, she visited a number of elite institutions and was eventually accepted to her top choice, Brown University. Her back-up school, she says, was the University of Maryland. When Sacks got into Brown, though, there was no question in her mind that she should go there, so she enrolled in chemistry and several other classes. Right away, she was surprised that everyone seemed just like her—“intellectually curious and kind of nervous and excited.” At that point, she couldn’t have been happier with her choice.
Faced with the same decision, most people would do what Sacks did and choose Brown over the University of Maryland. This is because Brown is one of the nation’s most respected and competitive schools. Given that David and Goliath is about the incorrect assumptions people often make about what counts as an advantage, though, it seems all too likely that Gladwell intends to challenge the idea that it’s always beneficial to attend an Ivy League school. In turn, the book invites readers to ask themselves if there are some situations in which attending a public school like the University of Maryland would be a better choice than attending a more prestigious school like Brown.
Themes
Gladwell asks readers if Caroline Sacks’s decision to go to Brown might seem less ideal when compared to the Impressionists’ decision to turn away from the Salon. The Impressionists, Gladwell argues, grasped that striking out on their own would have its own set of benefits and downsides in comparison to the Salon, which was somewhat like an Ivy League school. In the same way that the Salon was prestigious and well-respected, Ivy League schools are sought-after institutions. However, the Salon had its own drawbacks. Because it accepted so many paintings, the vast majority of the pieces went largely unnoticed, meaning that the Salon’s prestige was one of its only benefits.
Slowly but surely, Gladwell begins to reveal the downsides of various elite institutions. In the same way that Goliath’s widely respected strength later leads to his demise, Gladwell implies that the very thing that attracts the Impressionists to the Salon in the first place—namely, its popularity—is what ends up working against them, since the few times they actually display pieces in the Salon, their paintings are hung inconspicuously, lost among the many other canvases. The Salon’s appeal of exclusivity, then, is also its worst quality.
Themes
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Recounting the story of the Impressionists, Gladwell says that Pissarro and Monet suggested that the group found a collective in which every artist would be treated the same. In 1874, they put on their first show, displaying 165 pieces on the top floor of a building with small, connected rooms. It was a massive success, and viewers were able to see each painting up close in ways they would never be able to at the Salon. These days, to buy one of the paintings displayed at this show would cost more than a billion dollars. This, Gladwell suggests, indicates that it is sometimes much better to be a “Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little Fish in a Big Pond.”
Again, Gladwell makes it clear that the Impressionists were wise to turn away from convention by putting on their own art show. In their case, it paid off to be a Big Fishes in a Little Pond. The question becomes, then, whether or not the same would hold true for Caroline Sacks, who—as somebody who went to Brown—entered college as a Little Fish in a Big Pond.
Themes
According to Gladwell, Sacks’s decision to be a Little Fish in a Big Pond costs her. During the second semester of her freshman year at Brown, she receives a poor grade on a midterm exam in chemistry. In retrospect, Sacks thinks she was most likely enrolled in too many classes and doing too many extracurricular activities, but at the time, she is overwhelmingly disappointed and discouraged. When she meets with the professor, he urges her to drop the class and take it again the following semester. Sacks follows his advice, but when she takes it again, she receives a B: a shocking grade to her, since she’s only ever gotten A’s. This, Sacks says, is especially discouraging because all her classmates are freshmen. Worse, none of them want to talk about study habits or help each other because they are all so competitive.
Caroline Sacks’s problem isn’t that she’s too unintelligent to attend Brown. After all, she gets a B in chemistry—a perfectly good grade, all things considered. However, she’s used to standing out as an excellent student, the kind of person who everyone else admires as incredibly smart. Now, though, she’s surrounded not only by people who are as smart as her, but also by people who are even smarter. Since she’s never experienced this before, she finds it incredibly discouraging. Worse, the entire atmosphere at Brown is highly competitive, which only makes things harder for her. That she finds herself so demoralized by this experience suggests that she really would have been better off at the University of Maryland, where she would most likely feel just as intelligent and high-achieving as she always did in high school, and thus less discouraged.
Themes
In Sacks’s second semester of her sophomore year, she takes organic chemistry and continues to struggle. She can’t wrap her head around the concepts necessary to excel. Other students, though, have no trouble at all solving problems given to them by the professor. But no matter how hard Sacks works, she has no success. When the professor asks questions in class, hands fly into the air while Sacks sits silently and listens to her peers deliver the correct answer. She begins to feel “inadequa[te]” and frustrated, and while studying one night at three in the morning, decides to stop chasing her dream of becoming a scientist.
In Caroline Sacks’s case, going to one of the top schools in the United States actually has an adverse effect on her overall trajectory, interfering with her dreams of becoming a scientist. As somebody who obviously responds well to positive reinforcement (as evidenced by her history of success in high school), being in a cut-throat academic environment only demoralizes her. Therefore, Gladwell implies, it is not always beneficial to attend the most prestigious universities, despite what most people might think.
Themes
What’s perhaps most unfortunate about Sacks’s experience at Brown is that it shouldn’t have mattered how good she was at organic chemistry, since she never wanted to be an organic chemist anyway. Many people find organic chemistry nearly impossible, and some premed students even take it at another institution during the summer just to get months of practice before taking it at their own school. To add to this, Sacks took organic chemistry at one of the most competitive institutions in the country. One of the main reasons Sacks quit science, then, is that she was comparing herself to some of the smartest, most competitive students in the entire nation. She wasn’t comparing herself to everyone taking organic chemistry, but if she were, she’d most likely have felt rather competent. Instead, she suffered as a Little Fish in a Big Pond, and it made her feel unintelligent.
To somebody like Caroline Sacks who’s always seen herself as someone who excels, competing against other high-achievers is intellectually damaging, regardless of the fact that the majority of people in the world wouldn’t do nearly as well as her. This, Gladwell intimates, is one of the drawbacks of being a Little Fish in a Big Pond. It’s also an indication that the things people think are advantageous—say, for example, going to an Ivy League school—aren’t always as beneficial as they might seem.
Themes
Gladwell argues that Caroline Sacks suffered from “relative deprivation,” a concept coined by a sociologist studying morale. The term refers to the fact that people tend to compare themselves not to all of society, but to their immediate peers. Because Sacks attended Brown, then, she made damaging comparisons between herself and her highly accomplished peers. This, Gladwell says, is simply human nature, since it makes sense for people to compare themselves to others in the same environment, not to some abstract universal. Therefore, “the more elite an educational institution is, the worse students feel about their own academic abilities.”
Sacks’s decision to be a Little Fish in a Big Pond instead of a Big Fish in a Little Pond ultimately led to her struggle with “relative deprivation,” since comparing herself to such intelligent peers discouraged her. This importantly indicates that it’s not always beneficial to attend the most prestigious institutions, since doing so can discourage otherwise brilliant students like Caroline Sacks.
Themes
What happened to Caroline Sacks is common. In fact, more than half of STEM (science, technology, and math) students drop out of the sciences within the first two years of their course of study. To examine this trend, Gladwell looks at the SAT scores of STEM majors at Hartwick College in New York. The top third of the class received an average score of 569 on the math SATs, whereas the bottom third of the class received an average score of 407. Going on, Gladwell notes that 55 percent of the top third actually ended up earning STEM degrees, while only 17.8 percent of the bottom third graduated with STEM degrees. These figures make sense, since most of the students entering STEM majors with the lowest SAT scores end up switching tracks.
In this section, Gladwell presents data that show just how difficult it is to succeed in STEM. However, this isn’t his main point. Rather, he wants to expand upon his notion that it’s not always beneficial to attend the most prestigious institutions, even if society continues to promote this idea. To do so, then, he examines the retention rate of college STEM majors, clearly preparing to compare these figures (drawn from a non-Ivy League school) with those drawn from more prestigious colleges.
Themes
Continuing his examination of STEM major retention rates at various colleges, Gladwell explains that the same trends hold true for students at Harvard as at Hartwick, even though the bottom third of the class received an average math SAT score of 581—higher than the average score of the top third at Hartwick. And yet, only 15.4 percent of students in Harvard’s bottom third ended up earning STEM degrees. This means that it’s better to be in the top third of the class at Hartwick than in the bottom third at Harvard, since 55 percent of Hartwick’s highest-scoring students received STEM degrees. Even though the Harvard students with the lowest SAT scores are technically smarter than the highest-scoring Hartwick students, more of those Hartwick students end up earning STEM degrees.
It is somewhat difficult to visualize the information Gladwell presents here without actually looking at the charts he provides, but the important thing to understand is quite simple: Hartwick students at the top of their class are better off than Harvard students at the bottom of theirs, even though the Harvard students are smarter (according to their SAT scores). This confirms that Caroline Sacks would most likely have found success if she’d gone to the University of Maryland, where she didn’t have to compete against such intimidating peers. That only 15.4 percent of Harvard’s bottom-third students graduate with STEM degrees suggests that the learning environment at Harvard is simply too much for many people to bear—even if those people are quite intelligent. Once again, then, Gladwell gives readers another reason to second-guess the things society assumes are beneficial.
Themes
Gladwell’s analysis of SAT scores illustrates that it’s better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond than a Little Fish in a Big Pond. Looking at the same statistics at a number of other schools, Gladwell further emphasizes the validity of this theory. He also turns his attention to economics scholars interviewing for jobs at various universities. Instead of using test scores as a metric, he looks at the average number of papers the candidates have published in the field’s top journals, finding that candidates who were at the top of their class at non-prestigious schools have better publication records than almost everyone who attended Ivy League schools (except those who were in the 90th percentile or higher at Ivy League institutions). This means that academic employers are better off hiring Big Fish from Little Ponds than Little Fish from Big Ponds.
Gladwell’s second example about the benefits of being a Big Fish in a Little Pond is important because it indicates not only that people have a better likelihood of graduating with a STEM degree if they attend less competitive schools, but also that graduates of these school are better off after their education, too. After all, economists from supposedly mediocre schools end up securing more publishing success than the majority of economists from Ivy League schools. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they end up getting hired more often, and Gladwell doesn’t clarify this point. To that end, if hiring committees still believe in the prestige attached to the Ivy League, then they might still favor the candidates from the most competitive institutions, though it’s worth noting that this would still align with Gladwell’s overall point about the inordinate amount of significance people associate with prestige.
Themes
Gladwell applies the idea of being a Little Fish in a Big Pond to the debate surrounding affirmative action. The thinking behind affirmative action—insofar as it pertains to college admissions—is that “helping minorities get into selective schools is justified given the long history of discrimination.” Some people, however, believe that admissions should only focus on academic ability. And there’s yet another group who think affirmative action should be based on financial considerations, not race. Gladwell, for his part, maintains that all three of these views take for granted that going to prestigious institutions is an advantage in the first place—an idea of which he’s deeply suspicious. According to him, it’s potentially harmful to take good students who “happen to be black” and “bump them up a notch,” since this will simply put them in the same situation as Caroline Sacks.
Regardless of whether or not Gladwell supports affirmative action, his primary intention is to highlight the fact that the vast majority of people tend to assume that going to an elite university is beneficial. This assumption underlines society’s tendency to take it for granted that certain things are advantages when, in reality, they aren’t—or at least aren’t always advantageous. Once again, then, Gladwell suggests that people ought to more carefully scrutinize what, exactly, counts as beneficial.
Themes
At the same time, Gladwell doesn’t think affirmative action is wrong. His main point is that there are a number of downsides to the “Big Pond” that people don’t consider. Most people take for granted that going to prestigious universities will always increase the chances of a student’s success, but this isn’t the case. Still, though, people have very specific ideas about what, exactly, an advantage is—ideas that aren’t all that accurate. For this reason, people frequently discount the value of turning away from things that are typically considered advantageous. When Gladwell asks Sacks what she thinks her life would be like if she’d gone to the University of Maryland instead of Brown, she gives him an immediate answer: “I’d still be in science,” she says.
The fact that Sacks is unhesitatingly certain she’d still be in science if she hadn’t gone to Brown spotlights the negative influence that the elite institution had on her overall educational development. Of course, her decision to attend Brown is what most people would do, since it’s one of the most respected schools in the United States. In doing so, though, Sacks failed to recognize the negative aspects of being a Little Fish in a Big Pond, and this ultimately cost her.
Themes
