Spend enough time in myth and legend and you will come across a concerning number of orphans.
Young farmhands or wanderers, their fathers died in the great war, or simply vanished one day without a trace.
He’ll grow up and take on a quest defined by this missing father. Sometimes the orphan avenges his father’s death, sometimes finds that he still lives, sometimes finds that he is in fact the villain.
Like all the archetypes we talk about in this series, this one is so common that it goes unnoticed. But really this one goes beyond being common, it is almost universal.
Try to find a hero in a functional, two-parent, happy household. Good luck.
Because this orphan hero is found literally everywhere, it’s not enough to only discuss his archetypal meaning, we have to look into what his historical origins are.
We have to look at the true origins of the orphan boy, in the union between a god and human woman that births either a hero or a monster- the demigods.
In this archetype is found everyone from Achilles to Aragorn to Christ himself.
Demigods and Divine Fathers
Discussion of the orphan hero usually focuses on the Jungian imagery and the mythic symbology of this archetype, and we’ll get to that later on.
But I want to start further back, with the true historical origin of this character.
This archetype didn’t just appear out of thin air, as the literary invention of some ancient bard. Its true origin is deep in our history.
In past ages, the term “hero” had a stricter definition than it does today. Ancient heroes were usually more than men, they were part god. Part of their character, by definition, was being an orphan.
The story is always the same. A beautiful human woman is courted (or raped) by a god, sometimes in disguise, sometimes not. But regardless of the details of their tryst, the outcome of this union is the same.
The result of the union between a god and human woman is a demigod, a true hero. The Greeks told countless stories about them. They are sometimes linked to the Biblical Nephilim, though the Nephilim are also described as giants, which are an evil cousin to demigods but not quite the same (that’s a discussion for another time).
This gives us the framework for the Orphan boy archetype. We have a Heavenly Father, an earthly human mother, and then sometimes an adoptive earthly father. So even if the child technically grows up with two parental figures around, he is still an orphan because the true father is not present. We’ll go over the symbology of these three parental figures later on.
These demigod children would grow up to go on epic quests to find or serve their father, or sometimes to take revenge for the god’s abandonment of the mother and child. The longing or rage towards a heavenly father defines the character of mythological heroes from the classical age.
However the story played out, this is the divine archetypal dynamic that created the orphan boy archetype in our legends and now in our modern fiction. It is the memory of the demigods and giants that once roamed the Earth.
Why an Orphan?
Moving on to the symbolic significance of this archetype, we have to ask why being an orphan matters. Why to this day do authors continue to orphan their young heroes? Why do we still “copy” the myths?
Well, archetypes are real, as is symbology. It isn’t just made up. Asking whether the real historical heroes or the literary/poetic archetype came first is a sort of “chicken and the egg” question. This archetype exists because it is archetypal, and the archetypal symbolic reality is always playing out underneath our own. These definitions aren’t optional.
So, all of our stories continued to follow this pattern because a hero cannot have a present father. If he did, he could not be a hero.
Being the “hero” is being the main character. The man in charge, the one taking on the quest.
If the boy’s true father is present, this becomes impossible. As long as the older, stronger, more capable man is around, then that man is the hero, not his son.
Only when the father is gone can the boy take up that mantle.
This is why in psychology you’ll hear it said that young men have to “kill” their father in order to grow up, in the sense of becoming independent from him. This is also why orphans mature at a much faster rate than children from normal families, they grow up out of necessity. The hero can’t be under the wing of the father.
In one way or another, you have to become the orphan to become the hero of your own story. Whether you do this in a healthy or unhealthy manner is up to you, but you have to do it.
This is why it’s more important that the father is missing than the mother. There are plenty of cases where the mother is still around. In fact, this was the norm in the classical heroic stories.
What really matters for this symbology is the absence of the heavenly father.
The hero is completely defined by the father. This can play out in different ways. If the father is good, the hero could be trying to emulate him, or an anti-hero might want revenge. If the father is evil, the hero will have to make a choice on how to use the divine blood inside him.
This is a common trope today, the demonic heavily father. A great example would be Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. This archetype of course has its roots in more sinister mythology, in the creation not of demigods but monsters and Nephilim. The child of the demonic heavily father must make a choice to serve light or darkness.
Since the hero is defined by this family structure, let’s go over the symbolic roles of the three parental figures.
In modern symbology, the “heavenly” father is usually no longer a god, but is just the boy’s true biological father. It doesn’t really matter, the role is the same. But the heavenly aspect is still there in how the true father is usually some sort of great or dangerous or powerful man, greater than the boys adoptive father, if he has one. Maybe the boy doesn’t have divine blood in modern tellings, but he has the bloodline of something more potent than that of the little village he grows up in. There is something in his blood that makes him special.
The role of the human mother is mostly unchanged, the only difference now being that it’s more common for her to be dead or missing along with the heavenly father character. This is probably to allow for more mystery. When the mother is present, the boy grows up knowing of and idolizing (or hating) the divine father.
Because of this, the role of the adoptive earthly father has become larger. Before he was usually irrelevant, but now you’ll find him in most stories. He may be the human mother’s new husband if she is alive, but usually you’ll find him in the uncle, older brother, warden, guardian, etc- anyone that raises the young orphan in the absence of his true parents. There’s two types of adoptive father archetypes. One is the good one, the kind uncle or mentor who raises the boy until eventually telling him the truth of his lineage and sending him on his quest. The other is the tyrant, who keeps the boy from the truth, treats him like a slave, essentially tries to deny him his divine blood.
You’d be hard pressed to find a story not involving these three parental figures.
Another aspect of this orphan hero archetype is the sibling character. This character is the same as the orphan hero, but is his evil counterpart. Where the hero wants to gain his heavenly father’s respect, this darker sibling wants revenge for his abandonment. In modern stories this character is sometimes an actual sibling, sometimes not. He could just be another orphan with many similarities to the protagonist. A great example of this would be Harry Potter and Voldemort. Harry idolizes his dead father. Tom Riddle murdered his own.
I want to point out how universal these archetypes are in our modern fiction. Almost every modern Western protagonist is an orphan:
Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, Bruce Wayne (Batman), Clark Kent (Superman), Link from the Legend of Zelda, the Pevensie children, Prince Caspian, Aragorn, Tom Sawyer, Jon Snow, King Arthur, James Bond, the Winchester brothers, I could go on and on.
Then you could look at Classical Greek myths where essentially every single hero is an orphan.
You can look at history as well. Look how many great men were orphans. They are disproportionately represented. This archetype is not only symbolic and literary, but plays out in the physical world.
We live in a world of archetypes and symbolism.
Modern Subversion
Now that you know this archetype inside and out, you’ll never be able to unsee its modern subversion.
The present, but completely useless and pathetic, true father.
Watch modern TV for an hour. You’ll see it.
Fathers are no longer missing on some great quest or dead in the war. They are very present, very fat, very useless. These new “heroes” go on quests not because of their father, but in spite of him.
No, these useless fathers are not a version of the tyrant adoptive father. These guys are the hero’s actual, biological daddy. The archetypal story disappears in a sea of irony and disdain.
The hand-wringing, cowardly father is of course an actual archetype. Its not that he should never be used. But he has become the default, brought from the margins to the forefront. It’s really a disgusting subversion of the true hero’s journey.
With a father like around there is nothing. No quest or secrets to uncover, no legacy, no divine bloodline.
With fathers like these, who needs enemies?
Avoid these stories like the plague.
It’s worth pointing out that the fulfillment of the orphan hero archetype is in Jesus Christ. Like the classical heroes, he had his earthly adoptive father, human mother, and divine father in the heavens. But he is the fulfillment. He is in complete alignment with his heavenly father, honorable to his earthly parents, and fully completes the mission from his heavenly father. He is what every ancient demigod strove to be.
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