abandonment theme

also known as: coping with being abandoned

A character, typically a child, who has been dependent on another character, typically a parent, for guidance and/or sustenance must come to terms with the situation when that aid is suddenly and deliberately withdrawn.

Examples

A mother drove her android boy to the forest and abandoned him there in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001).

14 total · 7 major · 7 minor

StoryLevelMotivation
ahp7x15 major Mickey came to grips with that his father had ditched at the police station and ran off with a woman not his mother.
ftt1982e2x06 major Hansel and Gretel were abandoned by their parents in the middle of a forest.
movie: AI Artificial Intelligence (2001) major Monica drove David to the forest and abandoned him there with only his AI teddy bear for company.
movie: Dark Phoenix (2019) major Jean felt that her father had abandoned her as a child, and she went back to see him as an adult to give him a piece of her mind.
movie: Night Raiders (2021) major The government manipulated young Waseese into thinking that she'd been abandoned by her mother. Waseese felt torn between her mother and the state she'd been indoctrinated to revere as a result.
talesfromtheloop1x01 major Young Loretta considered the possibility that her mother had deliberately taken off without telling her. Loretta confided in her young son Cole, telling him that her mother had left her when she was his age, and reassured him that she would not follow suit.
tftc1989e7x10 major Leah harbored an intense hated her father, Reverend Jonathan, for what she took as him having abandoned her and her twin sister. This hatred consumed Leah, and she ultimately attacked him with a dagger.
ahp6x07 minor Shasta spoke of how her husband abandoned her and ran off with another woman.
apuleius180tgainset1 minor Psyche was abandoned by Cupid as a punishment.
movie: Radioactive Dreams (1985) minor Philip and Marlowe sometimes wondered to each other about why their parents had locked them up in a bomb shelter and never returned. Rusty Mars confided in Philip that her dad had abandoned her and her mother when she was just a child.