Why is the hero of most stories always a person with an interesting familial background: orphan, step-mother, foundling…? It does make for an interesting plot twist of course, usually involving mysterious parentage resulting in either a lost heir to a throne or fortune or some sort of long prophesied hero, but after a lifetime of study upon the subject (I should probably get an honorary degree or something, people get them for far less) I have my own conjectures. What makes me an expert? First, I have a very interesting family background, albeit I won't be inheriting either a fortune or a crown, nor am I like to save the world, but still interesting. Second, I am an avid student of stories, having escaped into them from the moment I could read. So there you are, a bona fide expert.
Now as to my theory: it is only persons with a sad or mysterious background that have the impetus to leave home; the rest of us spend our entire lives trying to find it or get back again. One requisite for having adventures is usually leaving home, or whatever passes for such in a given story, unless of course the adventure comes to you, in the form or war or pestilence or violence or dragons or some such, which either destroys your home or thus forces you to leave it anyway. While we all love adventures, as long as we aren't the ones having them, is it not the ending we really enjoy, when at last the hero finds home and peace and joy? If you already have that, why on earth would you go out looking for it?
The truth is, we're all on that mysterious journey, in the midst of our own particular story. Some are blessed with a happy home of origin, others less so, but we all yearn for something we can't quite describe and as we mature and are on the brink of adulthood, we find ourselves (usually) on that inexplicable journey searching for we're not quite sure what. We try to find it in relationships, career, kids, hobbies, sports, possessions, drugs, travel…whatever, but alas we still can't quite grasp it.
Sally Lloyd-Jones, in her wonderful book The Jesus Storybook Bible, hints at this yearning, this longing for meaning and purpose and home and sums it up well at the end of her telling of the Fall and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden:
"then he sent them away on a long, long journey- out of the garden, out of their home…and though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God's children would miss him always, and long for him- lost children yearning for home."
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