Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Huck Finn, Mowgli, Tarzan, Harry Potter. Superman, Batman, Spider-man, the kid in The Graveyard Book . What's our deal with orphans in modern literature? I don't know but I could not buck the system.

"He steals out into the still house with the self-discipline of an orphan." 

So my novel The Merry Life of Charles Parker opens. Chuck is not exactly an orphan. But at 12 he is strangely adult-like. And isn't that really what an orphan is? A self-raised child-adult? Do we fear we are made to grow up too fast? Is this why we invented the idea of the teenager? A way station we never have to mentally leave? The orphan could be a more vulnerable self that we watch anxiously. The literature is probably for the non-orphan. Do orphans read novels? The literature is probably always for the reader and not about the protagonist. That's an option we have to consider. Here is the link where I found the above photo.