The rhetorical purposes of captivity narratives included: religious expression, justification of westward expansion, popular literature, and reinforcement of stereotypes. The Spanish represented the Indians as brutish beasts, the French represented the Indians as ripe for conversion/redemption, the English in Virginia represented the Indians as innocent exotics, and the Puritans represented the Indians as a serious threat to religious utopia (Campbell).
Common themes found in captivity narratives include fear of serious harm, e.g., scalping, or predation by captors (that captors would turn out to be cannibals). Captives often paint themselves as "cultural mediator[s] between savagery and civilization" and connect their suffering with their belief system, e.g., Puritan captives liken their suffering to the suffereing of Israel under Babylonian rule (Campbell).
Conventions of captivity narratives often parallel other narrative conventions, e.g., pastoral existence, introduction of a problem, trials and tribulations, and ultimate resolution and restoration to the pastoral. In captivity narratives, this structure takes a particular shape:
- A catalyst or event that transitions the protagonist from a "state of protected innocence" into "confrontation with evil"
- A period of captivity where conditions/ways of living are alien and the protagonist has little control over the outcome. During this period the protagonist often expresses a desire for freedom and a fear of a failed attempted escape/recapture. There is often a struggle between assimilation and maintaining pre-capture identity.
- Leading up to the captive's deliverance or in reflection on the events, the captive reports a swelling moral and spiritual strength (Campbell).
Further reading:
Campbell, Donna M. "Early American Captivity Narratives." http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/captive.htm