Rebellious Prisoner

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A captor checks on their prisoner. A few nights in jail, a cell or solitary ought to break their spirit. But they remain willful, spirited, and resistant. The captor cannot comprehend this. Why won't their prisoner break?

The Rebellious Prisoner is a common trope in stories where battle of wills ensue. While translating into multiple genres and media, it can contribute to psychological thrillers or angsty stories.

If Played for Laughs, Pity the Kidnapper may ensue. If Played for Drama, the prisoner may be putting on a tough front about the trauma.

Note: The TV Tropes name for this is "Defiant Captive". Changing it proactively to avoid delays over discussion of a name change.

Examples of Rebellious Prisoner include:

Anime and Manga

• In Inuyasha, long before she Took A Level In Badass, Kagome frequently gets taken prisoner by enemies hunting her and her motley crew. She doesn't make it easy for them.
• In Paprika, the Big Bad and The Dragon the chairman and Osanai respectively succeed in trapping Paprika in Dr. Chiba's dreams before she can wake up. Osanai makes it clear he wants his way with Paprika, who has butterfly wings and strapped to a table. While she can't do much rather than sass him, and Detective Konokawa has to rescue her by taking her into his own dream loops, Paprika remains Defiant to the End as Osanai starts ripping off her skin to reveal an unconscious Chiba underneath. Paprika gets better, fortunately.

Comic Books

• In The Sandman, Dream is a silent and brooding prisoner for the Burgesses. He gives them nothing, no information, and waits for them to die to secure his freedom. This also works against him; he sent no Distress Calls to beings that could have helped him like his sister Death, the real target; she calls him out for this in "The Sound of Her Wings".

Fan Works

• Discussed in the fanfiction Harry Potter and the Mirror's Gift about Jeanne Graham the shapeshifter. (Long story short, Harry accidentally takes a detour to Kamchatka, Russia, with Lupin and Dumbledore and helps free Jeanne from a Dark Lord named Deorg that uses her to wreak havoc via Mind Control). When she relates her story within the safety of Hogwarts, Dumbledore said that she shouldn't blame herself for failing to resist Deorg's mind control; she was only a child when he kidnapped her and killed her adoptive parents Charles and Maria Graham, and the fact that she's not broken in mind and spirit shows that she was able to rebel against him. The sequel story confirms this; Deorg subjected her biological father to the same mental torture, which broke him so that he spent his last days wandering the mountains and calling for "Shan," that is Chen-When Shan, her real name. Nevertheless, Jeanne resolves to never be that vulnerable again; since she's too old for formal magical training at Hogwarts, she starts learning how to use a Devil's Curse amulet to defend herself if Deorg ever appears again.

Film

• In Beauty and The Beast, Belle willingly trades places with her father in the Beast's castle, but she's not happy about it. She refuses to dine with the Beast, saying she's not hungry, and outright calls him a bully in the stage musical. When the Beast seems to threaten her life after she enters the West Wing, she decides a promise isn't worth her safety and leaves. While she comes back to the castle willingly to help the Beast after he gets injured rescuing her and Philippe from wolves, she still asserts that while she made mistakes by breaking the rule about the West Wing, he should learn to control his temper. It's not until she sincerely thanks the Beast for saving her life that they call truce, and their bond truly starts. Later, when Gaston locks her and her father in their cellar when he gets it in his mind to kill the Beast, Belle is fighting the whole time he's got a grip on her arm, and tries to break a cellar window to escape.
• Indiana Jones shows this with the main character and the friends that he makes along the way:
  • Indy himself does not comply with his captors, or make it easy for them. He'll snark and resist, and improvise means to escape. The only way to get him to cave is if one of his loved ones is threatened, like Marion.
  • Marion is not a fun prisoner. She'll always think of how to escape, like outdrinking a captor that lets her change into a beautiful dress, or knowing when to steal a gun. This didn't change when she had Mutt a short while after Indy left her at the wedding aisle; while being threatened with death, she was more worried about the fact that Mutt came to rescue her and got captured in turn.
  • Henry Jones, Sr., endured captivity at Nazi hands for months for his knowledge on the Holy Grail. He refused to cough up any information, and was willing to hit any guards with a vase, as long as it's not Ming. Later, he makes great use of a fountain pen to blind a soldier maneuvering a tank; "The pen is mightier than the sword," indeed.
  • Mutt has this reaction when Irina Spalko threatens him at swordpoint to get Indiana to cooperate. He takes time to comb his hair, showing that it's not a weapon, and looks her straight in the eye while telling Indiana to not "Give these pigs anything".
• In The Mummy series, both Evie and her son demonstrate this in the first film and sequel. Evie may just appear as a clumsy librarian on the surface, but she's tougher than she looks, as Imhotep found out the hard way when trying to sacrifice her to bring back his beloved. Likewise, Imhotep and his men kidnap Alex after he gets a MacGuffin bracelet attached to his arm in the sequel, and Alex sasses them. They can only shut him up by showing that the bracelet will kill him if they don't get it off before sunrise in a few days.
• Both films in The Rescuers show this with the kid captives:
  • Penny in The Rescuers is revealed to be a Plucky Girl. She talks back to Snoops, the mook put in charge of watching her when Big Bad Medusa is in New York, and tries to run away regularly. She also shows no fear of the alligators Brutus and Nero that are sent to fetch her. While she does cry in the privacy of her "bedroom," she keeps maintaining hope that someone will come help her. When Bernard and Bianca appear and says they got her Message in a Bottle, she gains her spirit and helps brainstorm a plan of escape.
  • Likewise, Cody in The Rescuers Down Under may be lacking in a few survival skills, due to outright accusing a man with a gun of being a poacher after falling into his traps instead of accepting the thanks of relief and then running off to find the rangers, but he is tough. He refuses to give up the location of Marahute or her eggs, even when threatened with a knife, and tries to rally the other captive animals in Macleach's compound that they need to escape.
• This is a common trope in Star Wars
  • In the first film A New Hope, Leia has a contemptuous expression for both Vader and Commander Tarkin when they board her ship and take her prisoner. She sasses them and refuses to give them the information they desire. The only time the mask slips is when Tarkin threatens her home Alderaan with the Death Star. Later in Return of the Jedi, she takes the first opportunity to strangle Jabba after he "hires" her as a new servant girl and Luke's melee distracts him.
  • Han Solo does not make captivity easy for the prisoners. In The Empire Strikes Back when he realizes that Vader invaded Cloud City and blackmailed Lando into betraying them, his first reaction is to shoot Vader. (Doesn't work, but points for trying and it's implied Vader respects him for the sheer audacity.) Return of the Jedi has his snark return if not his sight completely when Leia frees him, only for them to get captured by Jabba's men and Jabba sentences him as well as Luke to death.
  • Lando has the same reaction when he at least tries to keep Leia safe since she wasn't the target of Vader's machinations this time, as well as his people. On a rewatch it's clear that he was told comply or the citizens of Cloud City would suffer, so as he tells the heroes, he didn't have a choice but to lead them into a trap. When Vader refuses to free the citizens however, and plans to take Leia captive again because she's useful to his plans to capture Luke, Lando quickly machinates an opportunity to free Leia, C3PO, R2D2 and Chewbacca, getting a strangling for his trouble. He also orders all the citizens to evacuate so they can no longer be used as leverage against him.
  • Poe Dameron in The Force Awakens takes after Leia. When realizing that he can't leave Jakku to the mercy of Kylo Ren, he gives BB8 the message about Luke's location and tells the droid to run, while he fires on the Stormtroopers to distract them. It goes about as well as you expect, especially since Kylo Ren can stop laser blasts in mid-air, but he snarks how Kylo Ren seems to enjoy being the dark and broody type. Kylo Ren manages to get BB8's location out of him with a mind probe, but Poe fights it with all his willpower.
  • Rey does the same thing when Kylo Ren recognizes her as the scavenger girl that helped the droid, knocks her out, and takes her to his ship for interrogation. She manages to resist the mind probe fully, and then improvises a Jedi Mind trick to convince a Stormtrooper to free her, leave the cell door unattended, and drop his weapon for her.

Puppet Shows

• In Muppet Treasure Island, this happens a few times:
  • Jim refuses to cooperate or join Silver when the latter takes him hostage and starts his mutiny. The only thing he agrees to do is cede his father's compass willingly, as Long John says he'll be taking it anyway.
  • While dangling from a cliff in a Death Trap, to make Benjamina Gunn (Miss Piggy) give up the treasure's location, Captain Smollett (Kermit) shouts at her not to tell them anything. He says if she does, Silver will kill her when she's no longer useful. And he's proven right, when Benjamina says that the treasure is in her place and orders them to free Smollett; Silver strings her up right next to him.

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, expect this to happen quite a bit:
  • Aang is a pretty Nice Guy and Cheerful Child, but he will not make it easy for anyone who tries to capture him. In the pilot, he casually tells the guards watching him that he can escape with his hands tied, and proves it.
  • Don't take Sokka prisoner. If you do take Sokka prisoner, make sure he can't talk his way out of it. He convinces the pirates allied with Zuko that they would earn more if they handed over the Avatar to the Firelord, starting a melee between the two parties that allow him, Aang and Katara to escape. Later, when Azula and her friends stage a coup against the Earth King, only taking the king hostage makes Sokka surrender.

Real Life

• Pretty common trope for every military on Earth. Soldiers are expected to attempt escape whenever possible and refuse to divulge any more than the bare essentials required by the Geneva Convention to their captors.