Joseph,
You've written an insightful and informative paper on Gandhi in relation to the hero's journey and leadership issues in Useem. It is, however, a bit too heavy on the biographical information, and not as much an analysis of the leadership issues that arise in the course materials, even though some of that bio is crucial to make your case. In the future try to envision formal papers as primarily tests of the material, in which case the course texts take center stage and your chosen example is used to exemplify and challenge key arguments in those texts. This is largely the other way around, such that Gandhi takes center stage and the texts highlight him (granted, it's hard not to let Gandhi take center stage since he was such a remarkable figure, but again, the papers are examinations of key issues of the course).
Another thing I noticed is that the formatting gets a little funky in your submission (scan below), but this I mostly tried to dismiss as a computer issue and something easily fixed. However, you still need to do a little work yourself on the Works Cited. It's good but not yet perfect! : )
Grade: B, 85/100
A side note: Your discussion posts have been terrific! Keep up the great work there!
Best,
Allison
I selected Mohandas K. Gandhi as a leader because he not only changed his native country and his people but had an effect on the world as a whole. His philosophy of non-violence gave the world an alternative to violent revolution and inspired other leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. to stand up to repression without the need for bloodshed. Mr. Gandhi did not set out to become a leader for material wealth or fame, but found himself in difficult times where he became convinced that he had to play a part in alleviating the suffering of his fellow human beings. Like all other hero’s, he was called into action by events surrounding himself which he could not ignore.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, to Karamchand and Putlibai Gandhi in the city of Porbandar, which is located on the western coast of India. Gandhi’s father was the chief minister of the city of Porbandar, and his wife Putlibai was a devout Hindu who raised her children in her faith. When Gandhi was young, he was a timid and shy child who was not the greatest student. Despite his generally obedient nature, he went against his Hindu upbringing by smoking, eating meat, and even stealing which he regretted to his death. This part of his life was one of his first tests, of himself as a human being and a struggling devotee in his native Hindu culture. As a young boy on the threshold of manhood, Gandhi fought his Shadow, his dark side, his repressed desires that sought satisfaction in the materialism of the world.
When Gandhi was only thirteen years of age he was married to his wife Kastruba through an arranged marriage. He lived as a normal Indian man in a place where most of the people were similar to him. In the peaceful lifestyle of his fellow Hindus, and in the teachings in the Hindu faith, he found the ideals of religious understanding which later became his guiding principles. This early education in the Hindu faith gave him the ideals by which he would later lead other people by tapping our shared need for peace and justice. His Hindu faith and its principles became the guiding force in his interactions with others and the organizations he later found himself in. (Useem. Pg. 266 “Find Yourself”). The India of his youth was the ordinary world that Gandhi had grown up in and had become accustomed to.
When Gandhi was eighteen years old, he traveled to England to enter college to learn the law. He spent his first few months in England trying to learn to be a proper and cultured Englishman as was expected of the youth at the time. When he realized that this was a futile pursuit he gave these things up and devoted himself entirely to his studies. He was more determined to maintain the vow he made to his mother to remain a devout Hindu and live a Hindu lifestyle while away at college in England. Understanding his values and committing to them made it easier for him to make decisions in where he wanted to go in life. ( Useem. Pg. 266 “Know Yourself”). This renewed commitment to both his studies and his Hindu faith was the first crossing of the threshold by deciding on what kind of person he was going to be and the direction he wanted to go in life.
In his aim to remain a vegetarian he discovered the London Vegetarian Society which later introduced him to influential writers like Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy. His education, the discovery of artists and philosophers, and his renewed devotion to his Hindu faith became his meeting with his mentors. These influences shaped Gandhi into the man that he would become during his later trials and ordeals that he would eventually face. Through his meeting in England with artists and philosophers, as well as the native Englishmen, gave Gandhi an understanding of his contemporary world. He became aware of their mindset and learned what actions he could take to achieve the reactions he wanted from others, gaining the most beneficial attitude towards him that he could achieve. He learned the values of his fellow man and what it would take to earn their respect. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Gain Commitment”). The people in this period of his life became allies in shaping his philosophy and his understanding of a broader world than he had previously known.
It was at his time in England that Gandhi began to more seriously read Hindu and Buddhist literature, the most influential upon him was the Bhagavad-Gita which is a sacred text in the Hindu religion. It relates the story of Arjuna who faces the difficulty of going to war against his own family, a mission that would either result in his death, or destroy his tyrannical cousins. Arjuna’s chariot is driven by a boy named Krishna who later reveals himself to Arjuna as a god. Krishna reveals to him that in life we have no choice but to battle evil where we find it and in whatever form it takes. This work heavily influenced Mr. Gandhi in his later years, becoming the herald for what he had to become, and revealing the role that Gandhi had to play in this life.
Gandhi officially became a lawyer in 1891, after three years of schooling, and passing the bar exam. It was in his training of the law that would prepare him to battle through its courts system, the looming and powerful enemy in the form of the British Empire that was subjugating people to discrimination and oppression. He subsequently returned to Porbandar with the only the intent to help his fellow man and provide a life for his family.
After two unsuccessful years of finding suitable work in his native India he was hired by an Indian firm located in South Africa. He was hired to work for only one year but ended up remaining there for some 21 years. He did not realize that this path would lead him to become one of the most influential people in the world. It was in South Africa that Gandhi met his worst enemy, the British monarchy and the tyranny with which it ruled and enforced its empire. The British Empire ruled its colonies through institutionalized segregation against its native peoples, while it profited off of the countries resources, and made use of the territories to expand its imperial base.
It was during his time in South Africa that Gandhi got his first glimpse of the racial prejudice that was the reality of the time. In one of the first cases that he was expected to take involved a several day journey which involved traveling by train. He presented his ticket to travel first class but was told that he would have to ride third class which was how Indians, referred to at the time by whites as “coolies”, were expected to ride. When he refused to suffer this humility he was quickly and violently thrown from the train. For a brief period of time he considered going back to his native India, a reluctant hero refusing the call. But he soon realized that this prejudicial treatment of his fellow Indians had to be bravely faced and he decided then to remain in South Africa to fight the culture of oppression against dark skinned people by local colonial governments. It was at this moment the Gandhi heard the call to adventure in the need to take on the ordeal of fighting injustice wherever he found it, rather than trying to find and maintain a comfortable existence in the world.
In 1914 Gandhi made his way back to his native India after more than two decades in his fight against oppression. In effect this was his resurrection back into the world that he was born and raised in, the world that created him and gave him his values, and saw him return as a hero. Little did he know that returning to India would be the Approach to the Inmost Cave of his enemy and the home of many of his worst tests that he would have to endure.
After his return to India he took leadership of the Indian National Congress Party, an organization that did not deny British the right to rule, but upheld the right for more power and freedom for native Indians. He used this organization to give a voice to his cause and build the support that it would need in coming years. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Build Now”).
In 1919, the Rowlatt Acts were enacted into Indian law by the British colonial government. These policies allowed the incarceration without trial of any Indian who was seen as treasonous to the British authorities. Gandhi saw the need to respond to the Rowlatt Acts by creating his own movement which he named “satyagraha”, translated as “truth-force” or “love-force”. This was his Return with the Elixir, the treasure by which people could now oppose tyranny anywhere in the world through the form of passive civil disobedience. The act of Satyagraha was a form of non-violent resistance that called for national stoppages of work, boycotting foreign goods and services, peaceful resistance against the British authority, fasting, and meetings. He was forced to stop the Satyagraha a few days after it began because fellow protestors had become embroiled in violent conflict with the police. In taking this action Gandhi prevented the situation from escalating into an anarchy that would have justified the use of force by the British authorities to quell what could be seen by the world as insurrection against the government. This would only set his movement back and undo the progress that was made by previous acts of civil disobedience. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Move Fast”).
In the coming years Gandhi reorganized the Indian National Congress Party, into a larger and more focused mass movement. The Indian National Congress more strongly promoted the ideal of a new India ruled by Indians, rather than being overseen by the British like slaves. The main tactic of the INC was to boycott British owned and ran institutions which would in effect bankrupt these institutions or force them to change. Many of his followers and sympathizers were arrested during this time and Gandhi himself was arrested for sedition which required him to spend two years in prison.
This was one of many times that Gandhi had been arrested but this was the longest amount of time he would have to spend in prison. It would have been the most serious test of whether or not he could continue his fight against oppression, and quite possibly one of his greatest ordeals that he faced in his life. He chose to remain true to his original values despite the hardship of prison that he was forced to endure. He knew that if he weakened, his cause and the commitment of his followers would weaken as well. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Remain Steadfast”).
After his release from prison, Gandhi retook the leadership role of the Indian National Congress Party in 1928. Two years later, during the spring of 1930, in an act of defiance against the British Salt Laws, Gandhi and 80 of his followers began what was a 200-mile march to the ocean. When they arrived at the ocean they produced salt from sea water which was at the time illegal for the Indians to do. As the British government taxed the sale of salt, this was an act to deprive the colonial government of its taxes and revenue that it made off of the Indian people. This act of defiance led to the eventual arrest of over 60,000 Indians. One year later Gandhi ended this act of civil disobedience after a truce was made with the British colonial government. In this instance Gandhi had succeeded in playing the role of the Trickster. He saw the opportunity to show the world how petty the British Empire was in preventing Indians from making their own salt instead of having to pay the English for something that should have been a basic right. In effect he was shaming the British Empire for its rampant greed and imperialist policies.
In the later part of 1931, the British colonial government renewed their oppression of the Indian people. Gandhi responded by resuming his movement of nonviolent resistance and became incarcerated for it. During his stay in prison, Gandhi fasted to protest a policy of the British colonial government to legalize separate electorates in the Indian constitution for the lowest caste of individuals within India’s society, known as the “untouchables”. The protest drew enough attention from the public that caused the British colonial government to make illegal this once allowable discrimination against the untouchable caste. Gandhi thought that freedom from repression was for all Indians, no matter their place in society. The freedoms that he fought for had to be for the whole of society, and not awarded for race or class or religious association. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Expect Much”).
In August 1947, the British colonial government withdrew and gave up its power to a new and divided India, which became what is now known as Pakistan and India. Gandhi publicly urged the people to remain calm but the country was overtaken by violence despite the power and influence which he had accrued over many years. The tension of centuries of British rule had erupted into a violent anarchy in racial and religious divisions. This was the seizing of the sword in a country that was in the throes of its new shifting shape. The reward for Gandhi had been in finally seeing an India now free from its colonial overseer but this new age also brought with it confusion and turmoil.
On January 30, 1948, on his way to prayer in Delhi, India Gandhi was shot to death by assassins. Before he succumbed to his wounds he was heard to say “Oh God” as if thanking his God for finally being able to give up this arduous life for the peace that he hoped would come in the hereafter. He had achieved martyrdom, and to some, had become a kind of a saint. He had lived a life in service of humanity; he embodied the Hero archetype in remaining steadfast in his mission to overcome repression and discrimination in the world where he found it, and he carried the truth of his beliefs despite the ordeals of his journey through life. In Gandhi, modern leaders can see a man who chose the highest values of peace and justice for his fellow man rather than the joy and comfort that a person can claim in their short time on earth. He was an inspiration as a man who lived for his beliefs and weathered many difficult storms of his life, yet never losing sight of his vision and the dreams it would create for others.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869, to Karamchand and Putlibai Gandhi in the city of Porbandar, which is located on the western coast of India. Gandhi’s father was the chief minister of the city of Porbandar, and his wife Putlibai was a devout Hindu who raised her children in her faith. When Gandhi was young, he was a timid and shy child who was not the greatest student. Despite his generally obedient nature, he went against his Hindu upbringing by smoking, eating meat, and even stealing which he regretted to his death. This part of his life was one of his first tests, of himself as a human being and a struggling devotee in his native Hindu culture. As a young boy on the threshold of manhood, Gandhi fought his Shadow, his dark side, his repressed desires that sought satisfaction in the materialism of the world.
When Gandhi was only thirteen years of age he was married to his wife Kastruba through an arranged marriage. He lived as a normal Indian man in a place where most of the people were similar to him. In the peaceful lifestyle of his fellow Hindus, and in the teachings in the Hindu faith, he found the ideals of religious understanding which later became his guiding principles. This early education in the Hindu faith gave him the ideals by which he would later lead other people by tapping our shared need for peace and justice. His Hindu faith and its principles became the guiding force in his interactions with others and the organizations he later found himself in. (Useem. Pg. 266 “Find Yourself”). The India of his youth was the ordinary world that Gandhi had grown up in and had become accustomed to.
When Gandhi was eighteen years old, he traveled to England to enter college to learn the law. He spent his first few months in England trying to learn to be a proper and cultured Englishman as was expected of the youth at the time. When he realized that this was a futile pursuit he gave these things up and devoted himself entirely to his studies. He was more determined to maintain the vow he made to his mother to remain a devout Hindu and live a Hindu lifestyle while away at college in England. Understanding his values and committing to them made it easier for him to make decisions in where he wanted to go in life. ( Useem. Pg. 266 “Know Yourself”). This renewed commitment to both his studies and his Hindu faith was the first crossing of the threshold by deciding on what kind of person he was going to be and the direction he wanted to go in life.
In his aim to remain a vegetarian he discovered the London Vegetarian Society which later introduced him to influential writers like Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy. His education, the discovery of artists and philosophers, and his renewed devotion to his Hindu faith became his meeting with his mentors. These influences shaped Gandhi into the man that he would become during his later trials and ordeals that he would eventually face. Through his meeting in England with artists and philosophers, as well as the native Englishmen, gave Gandhi an understanding of his contemporary world. He became aware of their mindset and learned what actions he could take to achieve the reactions he wanted from others, gaining the most beneficial attitude towards him that he could achieve. He learned the values of his fellow man and what it would take to earn their respect. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Gain Commitment”). The people in this period of his life became allies in shaping his philosophy and his understanding of a broader world than he had previously known.
It was at his time in England that Gandhi began to more seriously read Hindu and Buddhist literature, the most influential upon him was the Bhagavad-Gita which is a sacred text in the Hindu religion. It relates the story of Arjuna who faces the difficulty of going to war against his own family, a mission that would either result in his death, or destroy his tyrannical cousins. Arjuna’s chariot is driven by a boy named Krishna who later reveals himself to Arjuna as a god. Krishna reveals to him that in life we have no choice but to battle evil where we find it and in whatever form it takes. This work heavily influenced Mr. Gandhi in his later years, becoming the herald for what he had to become, and revealing the role that Gandhi had to play in this life.
Gandhi officially became a lawyer in 1891, after three years of schooling, and passing the bar exam. It was in his training of the law that would prepare him to battle through its courts system, the looming and powerful enemy in the form of the British Empire that was subjugating people to discrimination and oppression. He subsequently returned to Porbandar with the only the intent to help his fellow man and provide a life for his family.
After two unsuccessful years of finding suitable work in his native India he was hired by an Indian firm located in South Africa. He was hired to work for only one year but ended up remaining there for some 21 years. He did not realize that this path would lead him to become one of the most influential people in the world. It was in South Africa that Gandhi met his worst enemy, the British monarchy and the tyranny with which it ruled and enforced its empire. The British Empire ruled its colonies through institutionalized segregation against its native peoples, while it profited off of the countries resources, and made use of the territories to expand its imperial base.
It was during his time in South Africa that Gandhi got his first glimpse of the racial prejudice that was the reality of the time. In one of the first cases that he was expected to take involved a several day journey which involved traveling by train. He presented his ticket to travel first class but was told that he would have to ride third class which was how Indians, referred to at the time by whites as “coolies”, were expected to ride. When he refused to suffer this humility he was quickly and violently thrown from the train. For a brief period of time he considered going back to his native India, a reluctant hero refusing the call. But he soon realized that this prejudicial treatment of his fellow Indians had to be bravely faced and he decided then to remain in South Africa to fight the culture of oppression against dark skinned people by local colonial governments. It was at this moment the Gandhi heard the call to adventure in the need to take on the ordeal of fighting injustice wherever he found it, rather than trying to find and maintain a comfortable existence in the world.
In 1914 Gandhi made his way back to his native India after more than two decades in his fight against oppression. In effect this was his resurrection back into the world that he was born and raised in, the world that created him and gave him his values, and saw him return as a hero. Little did he know that returning to India would be the Approach to the Inmost Cave of his enemy and the home of many of his worst tests that he would have to endure.
After his return to India he took leadership of the Indian National Congress Party, an organization that did not deny British the right to rule, but upheld the right for more power and freedom for native Indians. He used this organization to give a voice to his cause and build the support that it would need in coming years. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Build Now”).
In 1919, the Rowlatt Acts were enacted into Indian law by the British colonial government. These policies allowed the incarceration without trial of any Indian who was seen as treasonous to the British authorities. Gandhi saw the need to respond to the Rowlatt Acts by creating his own movement which he named “satyagraha”, translated as “truth-force” or “love-force”. This was his Return with the Elixir, the treasure by which people could now oppose tyranny anywhere in the world through the form of passive civil disobedience. The act of Satyagraha was a form of non-violent resistance that called for national stoppages of work, boycotting foreign goods and services, peaceful resistance against the British authority, fasting, and meetings. He was forced to stop the Satyagraha a few days after it began because fellow protestors had become embroiled in violent conflict with the police. In taking this action Gandhi prevented the situation from escalating into an anarchy that would have justified the use of force by the British authorities to quell what could be seen by the world as insurrection against the government. This would only set his movement back and undo the progress that was made by previous acts of civil disobedience. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Move Fast”).
In the coming years Gandhi reorganized the Indian National Congress Party, into a larger and more focused mass movement. The Indian National Congress more strongly promoted the ideal of a new India ruled by Indians, rather than being overseen by the British like slaves. The main tactic of the INC was to boycott British owned and ran institutions which would in effect bankrupt these institutions or force them to change. Many of his followers and sympathizers were arrested during this time and Gandhi himself was arrested for sedition which required him to spend two years in prison.
This was one of many times that Gandhi had been arrested but this was the longest amount of time he would have to spend in prison. It would have been the most serious test of whether or not he could continue his fight against oppression, and quite possibly one of his greatest ordeals that he faced in his life. He chose to remain true to his original values despite the hardship of prison that he was forced to endure. He knew that if he weakened, his cause and the commitment of his followers would weaken as well. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Remain Steadfast”).
After his release from prison, Gandhi retook the leadership role of the Indian National Congress Party in 1928. Two years later, during the spring of 1930, in an act of defiance against the British Salt Laws, Gandhi and 80 of his followers began what was a 200-mile march to the ocean. When they arrived at the ocean they produced salt from sea water which was at the time illegal for the Indians to do. As the British government taxed the sale of salt, this was an act to deprive the colonial government of its taxes and revenue that it made off of the Indian people. This act of defiance led to the eventual arrest of over 60,000 Indians. One year later Gandhi ended this act of civil disobedience after a truce was made with the British colonial government. In this instance Gandhi had succeeded in playing the role of the Trickster. He saw the opportunity to show the world how petty the British Empire was in preventing Indians from making their own salt instead of having to pay the English for something that should have been a basic right. In effect he was shaming the British Empire for its rampant greed and imperialist policies.
In the later part of 1931, the British colonial government renewed their oppression of the Indian people. Gandhi responded by resuming his movement of nonviolent resistance and became incarcerated for it. During his stay in prison, Gandhi fasted to protest a policy of the British colonial government to legalize separate electorates in the Indian constitution for the lowest caste of individuals within India’s society, known as the “untouchables”. The protest drew enough attention from the public that caused the British colonial government to make illegal this once allowable discrimination against the untouchable caste. Gandhi thought that freedom from repression was for all Indians, no matter their place in society. The freedoms that he fought for had to be for the whole of society, and not awarded for race or class or religious association. (Useem. Pg. 266. “Expect Much”).
In August 1947, the British colonial government withdrew and gave up its power to a new and divided India, which became what is now known as Pakistan and India. Gandhi publicly urged the people to remain calm but the country was overtaken by violence despite the power and influence which he had accrued over many years. The tension of centuries of British rule had erupted into a violent anarchy in racial and religious divisions. This was the seizing of the sword in a country that was in the throes of its new shifting shape. The reward for Gandhi had been in finally seeing an India now free from its colonial overseer but this new age also brought with it confusion and turmoil.
On January 30, 1948, on his way to prayer in Delhi, India Gandhi was shot to death by assassins. Before he succumbed to his wounds he was heard to say “Oh God” as if thanking his God for finally being able to give up this arduous life for the peace that he hoped would come in the hereafter. He had achieved martyrdom, and to some, had become a kind of a saint. He had lived a life in service of humanity; he embodied the Hero archetype in remaining steadfast in his mission to overcome repression and discrimination in the world where he found it, and he carried the truth of his beliefs despite the ordeals of his journey through life. In Gandhi, modern leaders can see a man who chose the highest values of peace and justice for his fellow man rather than the joy and comfort that a person can claim in their short time on earth. He was an inspiration as a man who lived for his beliefs and weathered many difficult storms of his life, yet never losing sight of his vision and the dreams it would create for others.
Works Cited:
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. “Gandhi, Mohandas K. (1869-1948). King Encyclopedia.
Vogler, Christopher. The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007. Print.
McLellan, Hilary. Story Structures: The Hero's Journey.
Useem, Michael. The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All. New York: Three Rivers, 1998. Print.
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