AP English Language and Composition

July 2008

 

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point:  How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Boston:  Little, Brown, 2000)

 

The questions below are posed primarily to guide your reading of The Tipping Point.  You are not required to answer them now, although you will find it useful to think through the questions in advance of the in-class AP essay on the book.  We will discuss some of these questions in class the first week of school. 

 

1.  What did you think of the book?  What persuaded you?  What did you find questionable?  Do you wish Gladwell gave more attention to any particular issue? 

 

2.  What prompted Gladwell to write this book?  What did he hope to accomplish by writing this book? 

 

3.  Gladwell writes, “The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea” (p. 7).  It is often said that the best biographies and memoirs maintain a critical distance from their subject.  Does Gladwell maintain this kind of distance in his “biography” of the tipping point?  If you think he does maintain this distance, identify two significant instances where he does so.  If you think he does not maintain this critical distance, identify two significant instances where he fails to maintain this critical distance. 

 

4.  In what ways does Gladwell insert himself in his text?  What are some of the effects of placing himself in his story about the tipping point?

 

5.  Early in the book, Gladwell observes that “Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do” (p. 7).  Throughout the book, he repeats, these phenomena are “like viruses.”  As the book progresses, do you think he intends to present this comparison to viruses literally or figuratively?

 

6.  Much of Gladwell’s reporting relies on the idea that people are strongly influenced by the behavior of others.  Our culture, however, tells us that we are responsible for our own behaviors, and we shouldn’t blame others for things we do.  How much room does Gladwell’s analysis leave for individual choice and responsibility in human behavior?  Does Gladwell turn upside down the idea that individual behavior is the engine that drives American culture? (Keep in mind Gladwell’s questions about criminal behavior:  “How can it be that what was going on in Bernie Goetz’s head doesn’t matter?  And if it is really true that it doesn’t matter, why is that fact so hard to believe?” (p. 151)) 

 

8.  Make two lists.  The first is a list of some of your behaviors that are a result of your individual choices.  The second lists your behaviors that simply catch (or caught) a virus.  Looking over your lists, are you persuaded by the small role of individual choice in the tipping point theory?  How different is the tipping point theory from your understanding of how and why you (and other people) act?

 

10.  The tipping point purports to explain a wide range of human behavior.  What kinds of human behavior cannot be explained by the tipping point? 

 

11.  Try to apply Gladwell’s ideas to MPH.  Think of an idea, behavior, or popular activity (or some other phenomenon) that characterizes the school.  Who are the connectors, mavens, and salesmen that make it happen? What is the stickiness of the phenomenon?  How does the context of MPH contribute to the phenomenon taking hold? 

 

12.  Now, think of something that does not happen at MPH, but should.  Again, who are the connectors, mavens, and salesmen who could make it take root?  What is the stickiness factor?  How will the MPH context contribute to success of the phenomenon?