What makes Captain America a Leader:An Analysis of Leadership on Captain America

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Leadership and Human Resources - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,0, Catholic University Eichstنtt-Ingolstadt, course: Effective English for Leadership, language: English, abstract: This paper will analyze what makes Steve Rogers as displayed in the movie "Captain America - the first avenger" directed by Joe Johnson in 2011, a leader. This will be examined with current literature about various leadership styles. The author used the model of Bass & Avolio who described the transformational leadership style. After evaluating if Captain America is a transformational leader this paper will continue and analyses the character of the fictional person and determine why he used his abilities for protecting humanity from evil and not used it against it. For this, the paper refers to the BKD Model by Campbell (2004). The movie "Captain America: The First Avenger" is based on a comic book called "Captain America I" which was published in 1941. The book showed Captain America fighting Nazi Germany and predicted the participation of the United States at World War II. The authors claim that Captain America was created to enhance the patriotic spirit of young Americans during that time (Weiner, 2009). Before becoming Captain America, Steve Rogers was a thin, small and frail young man driven by the desire to enlist for the military and contribute his part in World War II. Despite several tries under different aliases the military refused to draft him due to his bad physical condition and numerous diseases. In his last attempted to enlist for the army, the scientist Dr. Abraham Erskine who was the leading scientist for the secret super soldier project, gave Rogers a chance to become a soldier. After attending a training camp, Erskine administered a serum to Rogers which transformed the little and frail young man into a muscular and tall super soldier. This was the birth of the character Captain America. (Johnston, 2011). Leadership is a very