Made a Slave/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is taken captive and sold as a slave.

  • Straight: Alice is on shipboard when pirates take it; they sell her to a slave merchant, who brings her to market, where she is inspected as so much merchandise.
    • Bob is captured among the losing army, and sold with the rest of the defeated soldiers.
  • Exaggerated: ???
  • Downplayed: At a port, Alice and everyone else on board must perform tasks for the governor for three days.
    • Bob is forced to work for the army while the war goes on.
  • Justified: Slaving is a major industry, and the pirates' greatest profit.
    • The army doesn't want their opponents to go free to attack them again, can't support them in idleness, and doesn't want to slaughter them all.
  • Inverted: Alice and her master are on shipboard when pirates take it; they can get no ransom for her, and so dump her off at some port.
    • The losing army was mostly composed of slaves; the victors emancipiate them.
    • A free character voluntarily enters slavery, possibly to be released against their will later on.
  • Subverted: The pirates threaten to enslave all their captives -- to ensure their letters home to beg for ransoms are imploring enough.
  • Double Subverted: The ransoms are pocketted, and the pirates sell them as slaves anyway.
  • Parodied: Alice steals Bob's toaster and resells it. This is treated by the characters as a heinous violation of human rights.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice is captured to be enslaved; raiders on the market have no interest in her and let her go free; trying to get back home, she is captured by bandits, who proceed to sell her; she and the other slaves revolt and break free; another slave, unscrupulous, overpowers her and sells her to buy himself passage home; the others among them find this out and break her free again.
    • Bob is captured after the battle, and enslaved; the king offers the enslaved soldiers their freedom if they will fight for him; he sends them somewhere where he does not mind losing soldiers; they are captured and enslaved again; this king offers them their freedom and some farmland on his borders so they will be able take the brunt of any invasion.
  • Averted: Slavery is not legal and so not profitable.
  • Enforced: "They can't kill Alice, but we need some way to show how evil they are."
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Alice deliberately took the ship because of the danger; in the city where she is sold, she knows she can find her father's murderer.
  • Defied: "They'll enslave us -- but only if they take us alive."
  • Discussed: "We're only alive so they can sell us, you'll see."
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Made a Slave

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Made_a_Slave/Playing_With?oldid=1385094"