Emotional Management of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe's Main Character

Abstract

This study aims to describe and reveal the main character's emotional management in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, a Penguin classics novel published in London in 1994. This study employs a descriptive qualitative technique and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic approach. The research data was derived from the novel's narrations and portrayal of the main character. The study found that the main character's psychology employed a defensive mechanism to regulate all the emotions that arose. The main character in this work uses suppression, rationalization, reaction construction, regression, anger and indifference, and imagination. Repression serves as the main character's protection mechanism in the narrative. The main character demonstrated that he attempted to channel his melancholy into thankfulness and to turn his anxiety into rational thinking.