Malcom Gladwell explores the ancient Biblical story of a classic underdog tale: David, a young shepherd armed only with a sling, beats Goliath, the mighty warrior. It is a classic story brought down from generations to generations through the Bible, and it's validity has not often been questioned until quite recently. It has always just been inferred that David was the hero and Goliath the antagonist. Gladwell discusses just the opposite.
Gladwell begins by exploring the story in itself: the motives of each character, their actions and their outcomes. David was just a shepherd who had been protecting his flock from wolves and bears with a sling shot, as many other shepherd's did. Sling-shots were a very common weapon at this time; the speed at which a rock could be projected from a sling-shot is just as fast, if not faster, than a .45 caliber handgun. Crazy stuff. People who handled sling-shots concurrently had fantastic aim, making it a very deadly weapon. Gladwell, in describing the nature of this weapon, shows the inevitability that David would have been able to kill Goliath with the sling-shot. So he questions, why do we call David the underdog?
When exploring the nature of Goliath, Gladwell found that there has been much speculation within the medical community about whether there is something fundamentally wrong with him. His actions and his words imply many things that seem out of the ordinary for a normal human, besides the fact that he is overly tall. In this investigation, it was discovered that it is widely believed that Goliath had a condition called acromegaly, a form of giantism, caused by a tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormones.
"Why does he move so slowly and have to be escorted down into the valley floor by an attendant? Because he can't make his way on his own. Why is he so strangely oblivious to David that he doesn't understand that David's not going to fight him until the very last moment? Because he can't see him. When he says, "Come to me that I might feed your flesh to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field," the phrase "come to me" is a hint also of his vulnerability. Come to me because I can't see you. And then there's, "Am I a dog that you should come to me with sticks?" He sees two sticks when David has only one."
Gladwell enhances his credibility and uses ethos and logos by citing many other medical officials that used knowledge of his symptoms to diagnose Goliath with a real condition that would explain all of the factors of the story that caused Goliath to be presented as a monster and an antagonist. In reality, he was simply a normal guy that was unable to fit into the rest of society because of his large figure, and a guy who was physically incapable to act as a normal human could because of a condition he couldn't have prevented. He appeals to his emotional audience using his pathos by presenting this innocence of Goliath, and I've gotta say, he really got me. (I feel so bad for Goliath, poor guy)
The story of David and Goliath is one of the first stories I remember learning being raised in a Catholic family. The thing about Catholicism is that they present these stories to you with complete certainty, and therefore I was taught to believe exactly what I was told. I have always wondered about the certainty of stories like this, and how many things must be inaccurate after being passed down for 3,000 years. The way Gladwell approaches it, is with so much logic about the nitty gritty details of the story, and he presents it in a very persuasive way that doesn't make me question his motives. For example, he describes the specific geographical map of the place in which the story took place and where each person did each action and how it affected the overall story. And he broke down the phrases and actions of Goliath and created theories on them, backed up with logical facts.
Gladwell became obsessed with this story, because its a story he thought he understood so well when in reality he didn't understand it at all. He was so passionate about the idea that knowledge is flexible and what you think you know, may not be right at all. In his conclusion, he says something that I think encompasses his purpose; he states, "Giants are not as strong and powerful as they seem. And sometimes the shepherd boy has a sling in his pocket."
