Taking Responsibility: Conceptual Metaphor and the Accession Stage of Leadership in Eric Williams’ Inward Hunger: The Making of a Prime Minister

Williams begins his autobiography with the poverty of Trinidad and Tobago—the result of exploitation by colonial powers. It is a situation he proposes to rectify as the first prime minister, providing the direction to lead the country into political and economic prosperity. The narrative, therefore, becomes a textual space for the study of character, motivation and context in the construction of the image of the leader. Taking the idea of conceptual metaphors as developed by Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980), a central argument of the present analysis is that conceptual metaphor becomes a specific, directed means of demonstrating the record of “social action” that this autobiography is devoted to presenting and explaining. Together with an application of Gronn and Ribbins’ (Educ Adm Q 32(3):345–358, 1996) stages of leadership, the outworking of the conceptual metaphor A LEADER IS A TEACHER in the accession stage of Dr. Williams’ autobiography will be examined to provide insights into how leadership ideals are worked out in the early post-independence context of Trinidad and Tobago.