Harry Potter, Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Frodo Baggins; so many of our most beloved heroes begin their stories without parents. It’s a strange pattern once you notice it, and it’s not limited to one genre or tradition. The orphaned hero shows up everywhere. Why?
There’s more going on here than narrative convenience, it’s more than just a plot device, it’s deeply symbolic. The orphaned hero represents something primal: the human experience of being cast out into the world with no one to fall back on, the realisation that no one is coming to save you. They stand at the edge of childhood and step into the unknown, not because they’re ready, but because there’s no other choice.
Stripped of protection and inherited identity, they are forced to confront who they truly are, not through instruction, but through experience. Their journey is one of self-creation, it’s messy, painful, and deeply personal, but it reveals the true identity of the hero, not the inherited one.
Freud famously said, that one can only become a man after the death of his father. But this doesn’t mean that heroes must literally be orphans. Carl Jung expanded on Freud’s idea and took it further, proposing that this ‘death of the father’ can happen symbolically. The point is separation. Every true story of growth involves leaving. We must step away from what formed us, not to reject it, but to encounter it freely, to accept or abandon it with intention.
This is what some psychologists mean when they say “the good mother necessarily fails.” If she never lets you down, you never learn to stand. If she never releases you, you never leave. And without leaving, you never grow.
As children, we place unquestioning faith in our parents. We believe they will catch us when we fall, speak when we are silent, shield us from the world. But the orphan’s path reveals that even this safety, at some point, will cease to exist.
But the journey of the orphaned hero doesn’t end with separation. Stripped of their earthly safety, they’re also forced to look beyond it. When the familiar has fallen away, when the protective figures are no longer there, something deeper is required: A trust in what cannot be seen.
Without parents, they’re forced to see the fragility of every human safety net. What once felt unshakable is now exposed for what it is: temporary, limited, and only what is eternal can last. In this way, the orphan becomes a seeker. No longer tied solely to the visible forms of security, they search for something beyond them. Cast out of the garden of protection, they enter a world where the voice of comfort is silent. And yet, in that silence, another, more meaningful voice may be heard.
It’s not that earthly safeties are meaningless, far from it. They shape us, comfort us, even reflect something divine. But these stories seem to whisper that they are not enough. They are echoes, not origins. They are windows to the light, not the source of it, and that which fades is not worthless, but it cannot be ultimate.
And so we must learn to love the temporal while leaning on the eternal, because what comforts us now may pass, but that doesn’t make it meaningless. It simply means we must root ourselves in something that won’t.
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Written by Ben Joshua
