School-Age Psychosocial condition of the major character in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the sea of stories

ABSTRACT

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a novel by Salman Rushdie. It’s about a young person named Haroun, the son of the famed storyteller Rashid Khalifa who takes a journey to Moon Kahani (a place of the source of Rashid’s tales) to restore his father’s lost of ability to tell story. The story centres on Haroun who is the only child and brave to face many problems in his life. He demands himself to struggle so that he is able to change his weakness into a motive to solve the problems.

Concerning to Haroun’s characteristics in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, the researcher is curious to know how are the psychosocial condition of the major character, his psychosocial crises, and his ways to overcome the crises. Therefore, this thesis is aimed to find out those questions. Hence, the discussion will find out the psychosocial condition of the major character based on Erikson’s psychosocial theory.

According to psychosocial theory, personality is formed when someone passes psychosocial stages along his life, and every stage has a special development which force individual to face crisis. Children in school-age are curious, responsible and good cooperation between them will lead the child to be competent. A child in this age will face a crisis that is industry versus inferiority. When a child learns to do a work well it means he develops industry, however when his work is fail, he will get inferiority.

After conducting the research it is discovered that the major charcter, Haroun, as a twelve-year child is very curious, responsible, and competent. His curiosity, responsibility, and struggles to face the crises leads Haroun becomes competent in applying methods and skills, giving ideas, keeping busy in his jobs, confident to seek and respond and producing results. The crisis that Haroun faces is achieving a sense of industry to overcome his problems when he suffers inferiority that is regret, anxiety, and depression. He struggles throughout most of the story although he suffers a form of attention-deficit disorder, which is unable to concentrate his attention for a longer time. Hard works, patience, and his friends’ helps are the ways of the major character to overcome the crises. He then overcomes his problems and does not suffer from depression anymore.