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Moses. It can't get more epic and transcendent. How about Oedipus? Trying to avoid some very tragic prophecies he escapes, unleashing the prophecies. I think an orphan in literature, TV and movies may have a faster chance of creating sympathy for the wide audience because we've all been kids and remember having our parents at our side, so the "what if my parents weren't there" factor has a huge grip. However it would be interesting to know the opinion of adults that grew up without paternal figures or in cases where the presence of the parents was more tragic than encouraging. Other notable orphans: Spider-Man, Batman, Magneto, Luke Skywalker, and some incarnations of Lex Luthor. The Blue Lagoon. I think the common factor between most of those stories is the fact that being an orphan gave them some motivation or inciting incident to do what they do. For good or bad. Some (Batman) are created by the event that turned them orphan. Others (Oedipus) are not aware they are orphans and their ignorance about the fact makes them take some bad decisions. The reaction of some media against Jaume Collet-Serra's 2009 film "The Orphan" was very interesting. If I remember well some said it could discourage people from adopting orphans because they could see orphans as dangerous. But we have real cases like a woman who sent her adopted son back to Russia because "they feared for their safety after a series of violent episodes from the boy, then 7" http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/13/us/adopted-child-returned/index.html I wonder how this perception could be affected due to the changing definition of family http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/health/families.html?hp&_r=1& I think it triggers a primal fear of insecurity. What do you think about it?

When orphan characters get into trouble, there's no family for them to run to. They have to seek help from non-familial sources, which may or may not end well. Also, depending on the period and culture, family could DEFINE you. If you don't have a family, if you don't know where you come from, then who are you? [On the other hand, family -- and fidelity to family -- can be a protag's undoing (see "The Godfather")] It can be a trap, though, for a writer in making every character ostensibly an orphan. Just because a character's family doesn't factor into the narrative doesn't mean they shouldn't have one (or seem as if they just appeared from the ether). Does the protag come from a single-parent household? Does a major supporting character have a large family? Does the romantic lead have two parents of the same sex? Was the antag given up for adoption? It's "iceberg" info, sure, but the writer should know what kind of families raised their major characters -- even if that family was a pack of wolves.

Perhaps it tugs at our maternal/paternal instinct to take care of any orphan. When they are just out of reach of our fingertips, or we can't run fast enough, it tears us apart to not be their hero.

Orphans are rich symbolically, representing more than children/persons without parent/family. They may represent: The Ugly Duckling* — The individual who is unloved/unwanted by those around them, whose task is to find the tribe to which they belongs and by whom they are appreciated. The unmothered child — Though the archetype unfairly focuses on mothers versus fathers, the orphan is the counterpart/product of the ambivalent or collapsed mother. Some models of orphans may exist to point to similarly weak/missing fathers, but the archetype is far more rare. Stories about the unmothered child may also be about the parent. The abandoned — All of us ultimately are "abandoned" as we become adults. We are autonomous and cannot rely on our parents/families at risk of being subsumed by them again. Our rights of passage like bar/bat mitzvah and quinceanera are the stepping off points into adulthood, where we must make own way without the safety net of parents and family. The mate — We cannot become one with the other until we are no longer united with our source. This is another facet or phase of maturation seen in the abandoned; we are not merely adults but the progenitors of new tribes once we have completed our meld with the other who makes us whole and one. The dying soul — Those individuals who are suffocated and denied that which affirms their soul, oppressed in a way that obliterates their culture, ex: an artist cut off from their muse and their media. Persons suffering from future shock, struggling to integrate into the surrounding contemporary culture may also exemplify a type of orphan. Americans in particular may have an affinity for the orphan. They represent an immense diaspora of peoples who left their homelands for numerous reasons — from economic hardship and political flight to slavery — and are now cut off from their culture of origin. Their heirs for several generations may feel this continuing loss of cultural support, particularly if they are members of a minority community in the U.S. We are a nation of orphans. * source: Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

"depending on the period and culture, family could DEFINE you. If you don’t have a family, if you don’t know where you come from, then who are you?" I've heard it said that to achieve your own identity, you must figuratively kill off your parents somehow. So in that sense orphans are ahead of the game.

Illuminating. Thank you.

Orphanage is a good metaphor for things that needed to be changed. Legal double life precedent VS shady film noir backstory, which is reasonably avoided by characters of the genre. It raises curiosity within the character and as well externally (from the audience). In addition it is empathetic factor, in its ground. I mean no matter villain or hero, or a side character – our first thought will be ‘well, this is not entirely his fault, then’. And in case of the Protagonist, this very factor somehow increases our emotional feelings for his achievement.

Citizen Kane though not technically an orphan was given away by his family to an adoptive father, much like Orson Welles himself.

When I was 14, I started writing stories. The characters were always orphans, although I have parents and they are very loving and loveable people. It was only years after that I even realized it, but I couldn't imagine my characters having met their parents. There's a complex relationship between writing and reading. The orphan story resonated with me - it still does - and I wrote about similar characters (Eichendorff's LIFE OF A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING and THE MARBLE STATUE, Stefan Wolf's TKKG series or Wolfgang Hohlbein's fantastic novels). My theory is that we all feel like orphans sometimes, because we are trying to find our role in life, especially as teenagers, and that's a mission we have to complete all by ourselves. Often we feel alone, left-out and on our own.

I LOVE orphan stories, in my opinion I find that if you want to build up internal conflicts character-wise, there's nothing better than to take both parents or one because parents do make a person or have a lot to do with who they are. So with regards to the question, I thought of Oliver Twist, Aladdin (with my Disney mind:)), Mowgli in the Jungle Book, and even famous literary ones like Anne of Green Gables for example.. the orphan dynamic plays a big part in her stories.

Thanks much. I thought of an example of an unmothered child story examining the father -- The Great Santini (1979) revolves around the collapsed father, one who emotionally abandons his son due to his inability to be empathetic. A story with both a collapsed and ambivalent mother is Terms of Endearment (1983). A collapsed mother/abandoned child story is The Color Purple (1985); the missing mother and abusive father create the abandoned Celie.

Nice. Also made me think of Tom Hagen from "The Godfather." He's an important cog in the Coreleone family machine, and yet there are times when you can see that he feels like a stranger living in someone else's house. He's also put in his place at times by men who are supposed to be his brothers. Sonny reams him for not being a "wartime consigliere" in the first film, and Michael freezes him out near the end the sequel. It's like he keeps being reminded, "You're not *really* one of us."

I think it's easy to get behind a character who is orphaned/has lost a parent because when you boil that down to its simplest emotional state, it implies that they had a lonely childhood, and loneliness is something we can all can empathise with.

Wow, great example. I didn't think of this at all, mentally filed this film under Mob Flicks genre of which I admit I'm not fond. But Hagen is a really superb specimen to examine. The story probably wouldn't have been believable had this not been an American mafia story--the likelihood that this storyline would have unfolded in Italy would strain belief. It's a classic Ugly Duckling story that morphs as the family ages. I particularly like the symmetry between The Great Santini and The Godfather. Robert Duvall plays both abandoning father and orphan between them. Wonder what he would have to say on this topic?

With regard to the update and the question of examining other types/archetypes: Yes. HELL YES. Some of my favorite stories regardless of media are those that fully understand their characters' types and push them hard. The storyteller is shameless about using the shortcut, but makes it scream and disclose something unique.

Late to the conversation, but on the practical side, an orphan character greatly simplifies your story. You don't have to deal with the character's long-standing relationships with multiple people, all of whom should be reasonably developed and able to support the hero on their quest. That could make for a storytelling mess. With an orphan, it's the hero all alone, with no obligations to anyone that would prevent them from moving forward. Look at how deftly Star Wars gives Luke a family, then quickly kills them off so he can leave the planet. Family was the primary thing keeping him rooted on Tatooine, but when the story needs to move on, they're conveniently removed from the picture. Another practical reason is the orphan character gives the writer a chance to change the circumstances so that they gain a family - an identifiable character arc. It's the same reason most people in movies are single - so they can fall in love by the end of the story so there's some kind of change or progression. And you can bet if a character is married at the beginning of the story, there's a good chance that will come to an end, if only temporarily, before the movie's over. This doesn't apply to just orphans. How many movie characters seem to have no close friends or relationships at all when the movie begins? That's because we need to see those relationships develop on screen and in the story for them to have an impact. The opposite is true with episodic television. Most of the characters are married and/or have tight-knit families or associates, so that by the end of each episode, no matter what happens, that kind of normality can return. Everything ends up just like it started, ready for the next episode with no change that might confuse an audience.