Orphans are children who are abandoned by their parents at a young age. In the novel A Single Shard, Tree-ear is brought to a man named Crane-man at a very young age. There is another orphan named Izidor Ruckel; unlike Tree-ear, Ruckel was abandoned and was put in an orphanage.

Most orphans are orphans for the same reason, but they all have vastly different stories. Tree-ear, a 12th century orphan from Korea, was abandoned because his parents died from a fever. Ruckel, a Romanian orphan, was abandoned after he contracted polio. The similarities between Tree-ear and Ruckel is they both had a house to live in. Tree-ear has to live under a bridge in the summer while in the winter months Tree-ear has to live in an abandoned vegetable pit. Ruckel