Haroun Hero's Journey

For a long time, the hero's journey has been the basic foundation for many excellent stories. why is the heroes journey so popular? maybe it's seeing the character development or finding meaning in the hero's victory. Whatever it is, its clearly got readers hooked. There have been many fantastic stories but none compare to Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the sea of stories". A wonderful story where a young boy goes on an adventure to recover his fathers ability to tell stories and uncovers a magical world in the process. This boy named Haroun is the perfect example of a hero in the hero's journey. Firstly, we see exactly how Haroun develops into a hero. As any other hero, we see this brave, young boy take on the role of leadership fairly early
Not only that but Haroun also becomes more courageous as the story goes on. " I'll go" he volunteered. This showed him being brave and taking risks. Furthermore, like any good hero, Haroun saves the day. Although he left to recover his father's ability to tell stories he ends up wanting to save the sea of stories. Which he does in fact accomplish. Secondly, Haroun faces countless tests and hardships. If you've heard of Joseph Campbell, you should also know that his lifelong research has led him to discover "the monomyth". These are the several stages of almost every hero-quest journey. Countless tests and supreme ordeals being one of them. One of the first things Haroun faced was dealing with the abandonment of his mother. Since his mother left near eleven o clock, it was shown that Haroun could not focus for more than eleven minutes. "This created certain difficulties... some important things take longer than eleven minutes: meals, for example, and also mathematics examinations' (23). The ability to not focus for more than eleven minutes caused Haroun lots of trouble. Moving on in the story, Haroun is dealt with many more
There comes a part where Haroun has to make a tough decision and that is when he has to use "Wishwater". Throughout the story, Haroun is torn up between his parents and only wants his mom to come back. Yet when he has the wish water instead of wishing for his mom to come back he makes a tough decision and that was to wish for the moon to turn in order to save the ocean and the people by defeating Khattam-Shud (the villain) shadow. In addition to these hardships, Haroun had to face the war of "Bat-mat-karo" to kill Khattam-shud for once and all. These struggles made Haroun stronger and shaped him into the hero he is at the end of the story. Lastly, heroes are odd or have something that makes them unique. Haroun is unlike anyone else and we are shown that multiple times throughout the book. "There's more to you young Haroun Khalifa Than meets the blinking eye (19). Haroun is told, multiple times during the book. This shows he holds great potential and is capable of doing many things moreover, Haroun does what everyone else is afraid to do. For example, volunteering to spy on Khattam-shud and go to the old