Children Are Innocent: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:BretonSchoolgirls.jpg|frame]]

 

Victorian-era Europeans are the direct inspiration of a dominant view of children, inspired by the New Testament and stretching to the present day. In this view, there is a sharp transition between innocent child and little adult. The conventional age Western culture assigns to this tradition has grown over the years. The meme, however, remains: a young child is a [[Blank Slate]] not yet sullied by the [[Growing Up Sucks|evils of the world]]. Only upon [[Coming of Age Story|coming of age]] does the child lose this innocence.

== Played Straight(ish)==

 

* ''[[Laputa: Castle in the Sky]]'': Sheeta and Pazu, both.

* ''[[My Neighbor Totoro]]'': Satsuki and Mei, both

** [[Captain Obvious Aesop|Duh.]]

* In ''[[Grave of the Fireflies]]'' Setsuko's innocence is used as a foil to highlight the cruelty of war.

* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', this is one of the stated reasons why Fate's sentence was light despite being an accomplice in the dimensional interference; she was just a child who was following her mother's wish and didn't fully understand the crime that she was committing. Also, Precia's an [[Evil Matriarch|evil]], [[Complete Monster|evil]] bitch for not only taking [[The Power of Trust|advantage of that trust]], [[Abusive Parents|but abusing it]].

* In ''[[Phantom Dreams]]'', when a Jaki kills a child for a spell, Tamaki is enraged.

* In ''[[Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea]]'', Ponya's father wishes she could stay pure and innocent forever. Later, when Ponya's mother proposes putting Sosuke to the the test, he is distressed at how innocent Sosuke is.

 

* A recurring element in ''[[Strontium Dog]]'' is that children are (usually) not [[Fantastic Racism|prejudiced against mutants]], and often cheer them on even when their parents complain about how freaks should stay out of sight of decent folks. One particular story deserves special mention - a kid was caught in the crossfire between Johnny and a criminal. Johnny was wracked with guilt and chased away from the funeral, so in desperation to make amends, he dug up the corpse and brought it to a necromancer to be revived. This didn't end well.

 

=== [[Fairy Tale]]s ===

* In [[The Brothers Grimm (creator)|The Brothers Grimm]]' ''The Children Who Played Butcher'', some kids watched a farmhand slaughter a pig, then cut it up. They decide to play this "game" and slit the throat of the child picked to be the pig, killing him. Before they can cut up the body one of the mothers come across them and drag them before the magistrate. The magistrate, with the help of the local elders, comes up with a way to determine if they are innocent or guilty. Each child is offered an apple and a silver coin. If they took the apple then they are innocent of the ways of the world and didn't intend to kill the other child. However, if they took the coin then they were wise to the ways of the world and intentionally killed the other child and will be hung for murder. It never actually said which they chose.

** This is one of their tales that appeared only in the first edition.

 

* ''[[Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom]]''. Mess with kids and Indy will '''[[Papa Wolf|END YOU.]]'''

{{quote|'''Indiana Jones''': "They're innocent children.... Mola Ram, prepare to meet Kali... IN HELL!!"}}

* Deconstructed in a lot of Guillermo Del Toro's films, particularly ''[[Pan's Labyrinth]]'' and ''[[The Devil's Backbone]]''. Ofelia is a wide-eyed innocent who believes in fairy tales, but that doesn't [[Infant Immortality|protect her]] from the horrors of her [[Complete Monster|evil step-father]], or for that matter of the fairy tales themselves. In fact it's because of her innocence that {{spoiler|he fatally shoots her in the stomach at the end of the film.}} The orphans in ''The Devil's Backbone'' are an even better example: they might be a bunch of little kids who love comic books and grossing each other out with slugs, but they're a complex bunch, and by the end, perfectly capable of {{spoiler|killing [[Complete Monster|Jacinto]] like [[Chekhov's Classroom|a pack of hunters taking down a mammoth.]]}}

* Lilo from ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'' has some unusual interests in things kids her age shouldn't even be aware of, but when she's about to be taken away from her older sister Nani by a social worker, she has no idea what's really going on.

* Brianna in ''[[Mystery Team]]''.

* ''[[Hotel Rwanda]]'' has quite a few terrified children who simply cannot understand the concept of genocide. One of the most heartbreakingly memorable lines in the film comes when a red cross worker recalls being [[Forced to Watch]] as the Hutu militia [[Would Hurt a Child|slaughter Tutsi children]], and one of the children says "Please don't let them kill me. I promise I won't be Tutsi any more". She is killed anyway.

* In [[James Thurber]]'s ''[[The 13 Clocks]]'', one of the wicked duke's wickedest deeds was imprisoning children in the tower. {{spoiler|Late in the book, the sounds of children's laughter from the tower and a ball rolling down the steps deeply enrages him.}}

* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[Operation Chaos]]'', the narrator and his wife have many run-ins with evil forces. The final one, which shocks them to the core despite all they have seen, is the kidnapping of their baby daughter to Hell.

* [[Everything's Better with Princesses|Princess Irene]] In [[George MacDonald]]'s ''The Princess and the Goblin.'' Who is so innocent she can't fathom why she should not be [[First-Name Basis|called Irene]].

{{quote|''"Oh, then, Curdie, you must call me just Irene and no more."

"Your Royal Highness."

"My Royal Highness! What's that? No, no, Lootie. I won't be called names. I don't like them. You told me once yourself it's only rude children that call names; and I'm sure Curdie wouldn't be rude. Curdie, my name's Irene."'' }}

* At this point this is the only thing keeping Eragon from ''[[The Inheritance Cycle]]'' from being a 'complete' asshole: he won't harm a child, he'll just consider it.

* In [[Bram Stoker]]'s ''[[Dracula (novel)|Dracula]]'', the vampire Lucy preys on children. Although she doesn't kill them, the children's innocent inability to understand that she was harming them—some even wish to meet her again—is particularly horrific.

** Later, when he orders Chianni to kill child hostages, she merely nods, and he is impressed that it does not perturb her.

** In ''Dead Beat'', Wardens can not bring themselves to leave children behind in danger while they deal with the bad guys.

* ''[[Songs of Innocence and of Experience]]'': Children are portrayed this way in ''Songs of Innocence''. This is then [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] in ''Songs of Experience'', in the poems "NURSE'S Song" and "Infant Sorrow".

* In [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s ''Duty Calls'', a [[Knight Templar]] explains to [[Ciaphas Cain]] how [[It's All About Me|he needed to do everything]]: even, when abandoning a settlement to alien attack, shooting the inhabitants when they tried to get their children on his ship. Cain, a self-professed [[Dirty Coward]] who would abandon anyone to save his own skin, is horrified.

* [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Sylvie and Bruno]]''

{{quote|''In each such glimpse, the face seemed to grow more childish and more innocent: and, when I had at last thought the veil entirely away, it was, unmistakeably, the sweet face of little Sylvie!''}}

* [[Domingo Santos]]' story ''The First Day of Eternity'' (published in ''[[Analog]]'') has the [[Innocent Aliens]] befriend the children of the colonists first.

* ''[[Left Behind]]'' uses this, no doubt due to the conundrum of "what of people who were not raised Christian or were too young to understand what it really means", and similar. Of course, the writers being pro-life, they also raptured children in the womb, and there is surprisingly little angst when every child under twelve (the cutoff point) suddenly vanishes.

* In [[Devon Monk]]'s [[Allie Beckstrom]] book ''Magic to the Bone'', Allie is surprised by a question of whether she cast a curse, and (truthfully) denies it—the target's just a little boy.

 

* ''[[CSI]]: Crime Scene Investigation''

{{quote|'''Gil Grissom''': ''Let me tell you something, Humbert. You're twice the age of these kids, and half of them couldn't find their own ass with a map. You prey on innocent children, concocting God-knows-what from God-knows-where, selling Russian Roulette in a bottle and you think we came all the way out here to bust you for possession, you dumb punk? I'm gonna get you for murder. Cool?''}}

 

=== [[Video Games]] ===

* Surprisingly touched upon in ''[[Killer7]]''. When assassin {{spoiler|1=Jean DePaul}} brings up MASK de Smith's popularity with children, MASK responds by declaring that children's purity makes them the most objective judges in the world. Turns out they're right.

 

=== [[Web Comics]] ===

* ''[[DDG]]'' plays this straight, the souls of children are implied to go straight to heaven since they lack the ability to make moral judgments

* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'': Reynardine tells Eglamore to "[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=45 take care of the little one first]", making him appear a good guy. Later, when the knight protects Antimony from it, we learn who is really good.

* ''[[Megatokyo]]'': [http://megatokyo.com/strip/325 The playground of little children shows the loopiest Largo's been yet.]

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2009/02/21/issue-1-page-4/ Jon played on his innocent daughter to get her to steal her mother's Endstone.]

* In ''[[Order of the Stick]]'', after Roy's heartfelt afterlife confession to his dead little brother, the brother's reaction was:

{{quote|'''Eric Greenhilt''': ''hi roy! wanna play blocks with me?''}}

 

== Subversions and exceptions ==

* Averted in ''[[Tekkon Kinkreet]]'': Black can't be older than 13 and has already mugged, assaulted and maimed several people. His [[Constantly Curious|usually innocent]] partner White also nastily averts this trope when he {{spoiler|[[Nightmare Fuel|lights one of their alien attackers on fire]] and [[Kill It with Fire|burns him alive]].}}

* Subverted in the manga ''Ikigami''. In "The Last Lesson", a school teacher loses his job because a kid was tired of hearing him talk and took pictures of underage children with the teacher's phone, getting him branded as a pervert. Later, when the kid admits to setting up the teacher, the teacher responds with "If you're truly sorry, then you have done no harm."

** The entire point of ''Ikigami'' is subverting this trope. The reason why the National Welfare Act was passed was to deal with underage crime.

 

=== [[Comic Books]] ===

 

* Played with a bit disturbingly in the ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Eva]]'' fic ''[[Nobody Dies]]''. The Ree, the Reego, and to a lesser extent the Keiworu are all innocent... by which we mean they do not seem to have a good grasp of morality. They tend to think that killing and violence, especially if explosions and/or knives are involved, is '''FUN'''. That said, they do have some very strict prohibitions against killing humans, because humans, like them, are "people", and harming people is a bad thing according to their parental figures. Kaworu speculates that they may be closer to what humanity was like before the "Fall": uninhibited and unaware of Good and Evil.

 

=== [[Film]] ===

* Mocked in ''[[Blazing Saddles]]''. This belief was the undoing of the Waco Kid way back when.

* Subverted and inverted by the play and movie ''[[The Bad Seed]]'' (and its remake "The Good Son").

* ''[[Tropic Thunder]]'' subverts to the point of [[Refuge in Audacity]]: {{spoiler|the brutal head of the Flaming Dragon drug ring seems to be about twelve years old}}.

* Hob in ''[[RoboCop]] 2''.

* Played with in ''[[Enemy at the Gates]]''. Sacha hero-worships Vasili as, well, a war hero, but he's also actively working to help Vasili kill [[Cold Sniper|Major König]]. On the other hand, he has little to no idea just how dangerous a situation he's got himself into {{spoiler|and it winds up getting him killed.}} Given the fact that the kid's grown up in a war zone and has presumably lost his father to that war, his partial loss of innocence is quite understandable.

 

=== [[Literature]] ===

* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. [[Sociopathic Hero|Arya Stark]] and [[Teens Are Monsters|Joffrey]] [[The Caligula|Baratheon]].

** Sansa Stark was [[Virginity Makes You Stupid|pretty innocent]] at first, mixed with [[Wrong Genre Savvy]]. She inhabits a truly brutal [[World Half Empty]], which [[Break the Cutie|showed no sympathy for her]]. [[Rescued from the Scrappy Heap|She soon learned better]].

* Played with in [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''The Small Assassin'', in which a mother becomes convinced that her newborn baby will ''kill'' her. {{spoiler|She's right. And the father too.}}

* Subverted and possibly inverted in the ''Confessions'' of St. Augustine, in which he opines that even newborns, suffering as all humans do from the taint of original sin, are capable of selfishness and spite, perhaps even more so than adults, who have learned to behave through education and experience. Some modern humorists [http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-things-babies-are-capable-of_p1.html agree].

* Subverted in the [[Andrew Vachss]] Burke book ''Dead and Gone'' when {{spoiler|the first of the ambushers trying to kill him appears to be the very same child he was there to receive.}}

* Averted in the works of [[P. G. Wodehouse|PG Wodehouse]]; children (usually boys) are almost always portrayed as obnoxious, grubby little pests.

* Subverted in [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Knights Of The Forty Islands]]'', where aliens abduct teenagers ({{spoiler|duplicates, actually}}) and distribute them among the forty islands connected by bridges. They are told that the group that manages to conquer all forty islands gets to go home. The kids are supplied with wooden swords that turn into metal whenever they get aggressive (i.e. fight). The protagonist quickly learns that this is not a game, and people really die here. Very quickly, the teens realize that it is simply impossible to conquer all forty islands, as each island only has no more than a dozen people. Eventually, the protagonist suggests allying with the nearby islands in order to be able to achieve their goal. While this works at first, it later turns into a disaster, as their former allies turn on them, kill the boys, and [[Rape as Drama|rape]] the girls. In fact, they find remains of children from [[World War Two]] era who have tried the same thing with the identical results. This novels seems to be about breaking every child stereotype to claim that, under the right circumstances, even a child is capable of anything.

** And the worst thing is, {{spoiler|[[The Cake Is a Lie|the aliens never plan to release anyone]]}}.

 

* At first, ''[[American Gothic]]'' appears to subscribe to this trope: [[Moral Event Horizon|Buck is proven to be absolutely evil]] by <s>murdering</s> [[Mercy Kill|mercy-killing]] Merlyn in the first episode, and most of the first half to three-quarters of the series is devoted to protecting the innocent Caleb from the sheriff's vile influence. But then, as Caleb [[Start of Darkness|gradually falls deeper and deeper under his father's thrall]], starts taking lessons from him, and even absorbs some of his powers, he becomes more disturbingly amoral, wicked, and heartless. By the end of the series, Caleb is practically a carbon copy of ''[[The Omen]]'' and it is Buck who must actually save Trinity from ''him''. All the more chilling because of how artfully it is done.

* In an episode of ''[[Angel]]'' in which a young boy is being possessed by an evil demon we eventually learn that {{spoiler|the demon is actually trapped inside the boy's body and the boy in question has no soul and is pure evil, shown by his actions after he is exorcised of the demon, when he burns down his house while his parents and younger sister are still inside, starting in his sister's room to make sure she cannot escape}}

** Another had a sociopathic young boy who {{spoiler|murdered his younger brother, then stuffed pieces of a model airplane down his throat}}.

* Seasons four and five of ''[[The Wire]]'' subvert this repeatedly.

 

=== [[Theater]] ===

* Subverted and inverted by the play and movie ''[[The Bad Seed]]'' (and its remake "The Good Son").

 

=== [[Video Games]] ===

* Subverted in ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]: Mask of the Betrayer'', the spirit of a priest is convinced that "the child" (who, at this point, is over centuries old after his soul was imprisoned in a furnace) can't have committed the crimes he was convicted of, turns out "The Child" is a brilliant liar who was more than capable of murder by arson, and if the requirements are met, join the party in control of a mis-mash of spirits called One Of Many. One of Many's dialogue is mostly encouraging the player to screw people over for power at every chance he gets.

** In the sequel, we discover how they've been programmed to see [[Crapsack World|Rapture]] - to them, the whole thing is elegant and beautiful (except for the occasional lapse into reality), with "angels"(read: corpses) lying on the ground waiting for them to gather their ADAM. Not to mention they completely trust "Daddy" whatever he does to them(although they may be scared of him if you go the evil route, they'll still go with him and gather for him).

* Puniyo from ''[[Mana-Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy]]'' starts as a straight example, but eventually subverts this as she seems to inherit [[Mr. Imagination|Lily]]'s active imagination throughout the game, along with showing hints of being able to become a [[Magnificent Bastard]]. Despite being only five years old.

* Heavily averted in ''[[Painkiller]]'': Battle out of hell. The first level is called 'orphanage' and features some of the most disturbing enemies in the game, most of which are children.

* Horribly, horribly subverted in ''[[Rule of Rose]]'': the entire game revolves around the Byzantian machinations and rivalries of the "Red Rose Aristocrats Club", a group of children living in an orphanage, pretending to be powerful and magnificent. Each of the children in this clique manages to be utterly vile, completely pathetic yet still at least somewhat sympathetic due to a variety of [[Freudian Excuse|Freudian Exuses]].

 

=== [[Web Comics]] ===

* Stewie from ''[[Family Guy]]'' embodies this trope to a tee, at least in the early seasons.

{{quote|'''Stewie:''' All right, yes, bring me ice cream. But no sprinkles! For every sprinkle I find, ''I shall kill you''.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Youngsters]]

[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]

[[Category:Children's Show Tropes]]