Harry Potter and Other Famous Orphans of Literature and Cinema

Most of us have much to appreciate in the parental hand we were dealt but if you want to know how important Mom or Dad really is, just ask an orphan. Being parentless tends to enhance one's perspective. Even a wealthy orphan would trade the fanciest electronic doodad for the right to enter a home whose warm familial welcome is guaranteed. An orphan misses not only a chance to know his or her parents but to be cherished in turn, resulting in a tough life which has been grist for the mills of artistic endeavor, ranging from books to comic strips and movies. Here are a dozen famous orphan stories we have learned to love.

The Ugly Duckling (1843) may be the most famous orphan of all. Tragedy has resulted in his adoption by a family of ducks who help him survive but resent him because he is different and therefore "ugly." Through the winter, the small creature suffers humiliation and hurt feelings. Spring brings vindication as the other ducklings grow up to be ducks but their "ugly" sibling matures majestically into what he was all the time - a beautiful swan - and is reunited with those who appreciate him. Who knows how much comfort this beautiful story has brought to lonely, sometimes unappreciated children. Good for The Ugly Duckling and his Danish creator, Hans Christian Anderson.

Jane Eyre (1847) is what many consider to be Charlotte Bronte's signature work, about a young girl who survives the horrors of an 19th Century orphanage to come of age in a time and place when a person without a family didn't have much of a future either.

David Copperfield (1849/1850) is another orphan of the same period who also defies the odds and survives. In our age of better health care and longer life expectancy, modern orphans are relatively rare but 19th Century London was crawling with them and Charles Dickens often used them as protagonists. He had weathered a difficult childhood himself and his writing reflects that. If you only read one Dickens book, it should be this one which many consider to be his signature work.

Huckleberry Finn (1885) was a grim counterpart to the sentimental Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain used Huck's adventures to show what life along the Mississippi River was REALLY like for some people and it wasn't always pretty. Huck's lot actually improves after his vicious father is mysteriously killed but being an orphan back then was no picnic either. In this realistic novel, Twain included certain ethnic slurs and remarks which were once routine but have since damned the book for many people. Occasionally, someone tries to ban this book which is a shame because its author considered both Huck and the escaped slave Jim who befriended him to be heroes and worthy of respect.

The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, depicts how lonely life could be even for an orphan who was protected and relatively well off. This is the story of Mary Lennox, whose parents have died of cholera in India, and her adventures in the English countryside where she lives in her uncle's mysterious mansion, takes time to smell the roses and bonds with new friends.

Tarzan swung onto the scene in 1912, the brainchild of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Lord Greystroke begins life deep in the jungle, born to young parents who perish before he is weaned. He is adopted by a kindly ape mother and lives with the animals for years until he is rescued and reunited with his own kind. Burroughs continued the books until Tarzan was a gracious, well-spoken man with his own family and these later stories are some of the best, in my opinion.

The Orphan Trains operated between 1854 and 1929, manned by desperate social workers and carrying more than 200,000 orphaned or abandoned New York City children out to the frontier, where they were offered to anyone who wanted them. Despite the best, well-meaning efforts of those who thought it was a good idea, luck mostly determined whether the kids landed in loving homes or were just plain exploited and taken advantage of. Numerous books and an excellent movie (1979) were made about this sad true-life event.

Little Orphan Annie began life in an 1885 poem by James Whitcomb Riley and was reincarnated in a Harold Gray comic strip which debuted on Aug. 5, 1924. Generations eagerly followed Annie and her supporting cast but never realized how adorable the curly, red-haired moppet was until she materialized into a real kid in the musical "Annie." The Broadway show and movie served as an entertaining showcase for incredibly talented (and sometimes very young) performers plus dozens of dogs trained to answer to "Sandy!"

Superman (1935) was the DC Comics creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. It is hard to summon up sympathy for a guy who can fly, see through brick walls and leap tall buildings at a single bound but Superman was orphaned at an early age, losing both his parents AND his planet when Krypton exploded. Then he ended up on THIS globe where he had to cope with being a little bit different from everyone else ... bereft of not only his own family but his own kind.

The Three Godfathers (1948) are a trio of fugitives in this John Ford classic western. Things have gone from bad to worse for the men when they find a dying mother in the desert and rescue her baby. Get out your handkerchiefs for this wonderful tearjerker and its even more touching earlier film version.

The Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), a brilliant Australian film, is the true saga of three little Aboriginal girls snatched from their families and taken hostage by a government determined to homogenize them into the Caucasian culture. Molly, Daisy and Grace escape only to face survival, eluding recapture, and traveling thousands of miles on foot to be reunited with their parents. They are temporary orphans, loved by somebody but nevertheless on their own.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1995) was the creation of another great English writer, J. K. Rowling. No one deserves love more than Harry but fate has dictated that he depends on relatives who resented and feared his parents. He's treated like dirt and made to sleep in the closet under the stairs when into his life comes a society of magic people who think he is The Greatest or at least a force to be reckoned with. Good and bad elements buffet Harry through his adventures which vindicate his worth and make dynamite reading. It's too bad that this author gave up on her carefully crafted characters - like Tarzan, Harry would have made a fine heroic adult man with children of his own.

The Importance of the Orphan as a Heroic Figure

Most of us have cringed through those brilliantly made but horribly graphic documentaries about life in the wilderness for animals. The films are especially disturbing in their depiction of what happens to an infant animal whose mother dies, leaving the abandoned baby to wander around, confused and trying to approach other mothers who reject it and drive it away. We don't need the awful narration to explain that this is the Way of Nature. In the wilds, the odds are so stacked against a motherless offspring that its herd will not waste food or attention on it and really just want it to go away and die.

Human beings aren't like that. With a few unfortunate exceptions, there is something in human nature that tends to worry about other people's kids. Perhaps this is why The Orphan is such a perennially favorite heroic figure in art and culture ... because the triumphant arrival against all odds of The Orphan at the threshold of successful maturity is a tribute not only to his or her own heroic character but to the best that is in the rest of us.