HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THEORY IN ACTION: A CONNECTION TO ALL MY RAGE

With an aim to explore the universality of human development theories through relation to adolescent character Sal of Sabaa Tahir’s All My Rage, this analysis explores how Erik Erikson’s fifth stage of psychosocial development and Hill’s ABCX Model of Family Stress present themselves and how these two theories work in conjunction. To create a basis of inclusion, this paper begins by defining Erikson’s stages and Hills’s model which act as key concepts in this research. Furthermore, a section of text analysis applies a segment of Erikson’s work to excerpts from All My Rage (Tahir, 2023) for the purpose of addressing Sal’s struggle to develop as an individual amidst tragedy. Finally, Hill’s model is applied to Sal’s family unit to detect either parallelism or juxtaposition between individual and family conditions. Pairing these two theories ultimately presents conclusions that support human development doctrine as universal, complex, and richly layered. (Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Gage Jeter)