(The Seeker; the One Found)
This is the Situation of "The Hero and the Nymph" by Kalidasa; the second part of his "Sakuntala," and the "Later Life of Rama" by Bhavabuti; the second part also of "A Winter's Tale" and "Pericles" by Shakespeare; likewise of "Berthequine" and of "Bertha au Grand Pied" (Miracles of Notre-Dame, XIV Century); of almost all of "La Reine Aux Trois Fils," another Miracle; it is the Situation of "Thyestes in Sicyon" by Sophocles and of "Alcmeon in Corinth" by Suripides. It is the denouement of "Pere Chasselas" (Athis, 1886); "Foulards Rouges" (Dornay, 1882); "La Gardienne" (Henri de Regnier); it is the old familiar plot of the "stolen child" and of stories of foundlings ; of arbitrary imprisonments, from the Man in the Iron Mask (upon whom Hugo began a drama) and "Richard Coeur-de-Lion" down to recent tales of sane persons confined as lunatics. It is the point from which bursts forth so frequently that double explosion of the principal scene: "My daughter!—My mother!"
Classes A and C of Situation XI move toward the same end.
In other cases it is the part of the child to discover his father, his kinsman, and to make himself known; thus it is in the "Enfances Roland;" in "Les Enfants du capitaine Grant" by Jules Verne and "les Aventures de Gavroche" (Darlay and Marot, 1909).
To the invariably happy and epithalamic ending to our plays built upon this Situation, and to the fortuitous coincidences with which it has been too generously interlarded, I attribute the public's final weariness of it. For does not this Situation retain more naturalness than the Nineteenth, and how fecund has been that Nineteenth, whose charm and tempting variety is all possessed by our Thirty-Fifth!
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Includes recovery of a stolen child, of one wrongly imprisoned, etc.
Examples: The Man in the Iron Mask, The Deep End of the Ocean.finding nemo
In life, people go missing most often through voluntary means, leaving of their own accord. 'Lost', here, often means that the seeker has lost the person who is missing, as the missing person may be quite happy. It also happens that the missing person is themselves lost, such as a child who is separated from its mother or adventurers lost in the wilderness.
Stories do cover voluntary loss, but make use of the more involuntary situation of capture and kidnap, where a person is taken against their will and usually against the law. Such situations make for classic conflict with the abductors, rescue and escape