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Run my baby run my baby run
Run from the noise of the street and the loaded gun
Too late for solutions to solve in the setting sun
So run my baby run my baby run
— Garbage, "Run Baby Run"
The Runaway is a child or teenager who runs away from their home and parents or guardians. They can do this for a variety of reasons, but there are three main categories used in fiction:
- The Circus Runaway: a child wants to run away to the circus (or some other "exotic" location) because they feel they are not appreciated by their parents or given enough attention. If successful, becomes a Circus Brat. Probably a Discredited Trope (or perhaps a Dead Unicorn Trope) by now, especially the "circus" part.
- The Abused Runaway: a child or teenager who runs away from a truly abusive or unloving parent. Much more serious then the first reason, but if done in sitcom, can lead to a Very Special Episode.
- The Orphan Runaway: a child or teenager who runs away because they have no one left, nowhere to go. Often the most tragic of runaways and can sometimes lead the story to Grave Of The Fireflies territory.
Examples
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- All the Runaways start out being category two, but after the first arc, they are category three.
- It should be noted, however, that only Chase's father was physically abusive. The rest were just supervillains.
- Yeah, their parents loved them a lot, so much they were planning on ENDING THE WORLD FOR THEM. I think the emotional trauma of 'parents are evil' fits catagory two.
- All versions of the backstory of Rogue in Marvel's X Men comics have her running away from home as a young teen or pre-teen, although no two issues have been able to agree on whether she ran away after her mutation activated and left a boy in a coma, or had already run away from home before that because of an unstable and/or abusive home life.
- Megan McKeenan from Local has a history of running away, not only from her parents, but from boyfriends, roommates, and bad jobs. She even knows this is bad and resolves to stop running...some day.
Film
- The plot of On Our Own is based around category 3.
- Were Back A Dinosaurs Story features Louie, a Circus Runaway, joined by Cecila and the dinosaurs.
Literature
- The title character of the novel Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli is an orphan who runs away from his aunt and uncle because he is tired of being caught in the middle of their cartoonish marital problems. His subsequent adventures turn him into a larger-than-life folk hero who ends up inspiring racial tolerance in an inner city neighborhood.
- Huckleberry Finn (fakes his own death to escape his alcoholic father and rafts down the Mississippi with an escaped slave) and Oliver Twist (after the orphanage where he grew up sells him to an undertaker as an assistant, he runs away to London where he is taken in by a gang of pickpockets before being reunited with his charming, modestly wealthy relatives) make this one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
- Tom Sawyer also briefly runs away from home with a couple of friends to play at being pirates.
- The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman is about the spoiled and arrogant Prince Brat who runs away from home out of boredom, dragging with him his poor, much-abused servant Jem. The two boys come to respect and eventually befriend each other before finally finding their way home.
- From The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsberg: a brother and sister run away from home to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the end, they return home.
- The title character of Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis runs away from an unpleasant foster family to track down the man he suspects may be his father.
- In the book The Mysterious Benedict Society, three of the four main characters are runaways. Constance's situation is never explained in detail. Sticky ran away from overbearing parents, and Kate joined the circus after her father disappeared. In the end, Constance gets adopted, Sticky goes back to his very worried parents, and Kate's Disappeared Dad gets a Luke I Am Your Father.
- It's now been revealed that Constance was an orphan who ran away from the orphanage in order to avoid the Ten Men.
- In Steven Gould's book Jumper, the main character soon runs away from an abusive father once he discovers his ability to teleport.
- Pinocchio, who runs away from his creator/father, Gepetto. The book version is actually far more disturbing than the Disney movie, featuring the puppet being hanged and then nursed back life by the Blue Fairy, before he goes on the run again, and eventually, turns into a donkey, gets swallowed by a whale, and etc.
Live Action TV
- Buffy runs away at the end of season two, not because her mother was unloving, however, but her mother found out she was the Slayer, she had killed Angel, and she was wanted for murder.
- Pushing Daisies: Emerson was once hired to find a girl who had run away to join the circus.
Theater
- In the musical version of Spring Awakening it's implied that the character Ilse ran away after being sexually abused by her father.
Video Games
Web Original
Western Animation
- Toph Bei-Fong. Her parents weren't physically abusive, but were definitely cold and stifling (even hiring bounty hunters to bring her back).
- Ty Lee preferred life as a circus acrobat to life among upper-end Fire Nation aristocracy, but Princess Azula "convinced" her to come away and help hunt her brother down.
- Timmy in one episode of Fairly Odd Parents. It was the first category.
- It turns out kids wish for this so often that Fairy World runs a circus to serve as a safe place for kids to go until they come back to their senses.
- Penny in The Rescuers, though in her case, she was already an orphan. She was trying to run away from her kidnappers, and failed each time, until the mice of the Rescue Aid Society turn up to help.
- In Don Bluth's Banjo The Woodpile Cat, Banjo runs away from home after his father tells him to fetch his own switch to be beaten with.
- In an episode of Rugrats, Angelica runs away because Drew punishes her for wrecking his office equipment, claiming that he'll be sorry. She stops by Tommy's house, and later sees her dad laughing with Tommy's parents, thinking he's happy she ran away. He didn't even know she was gone.
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