The Algerine Captive tells the story of the upbringing, early career, and later enslavement of fictional Boston native, narrator Updike Underhill.
The first volume chronicles Updike Underhill's youth and early adulthood in America; the Preface suggests that its aim is to "at least display a portrait of New England manners, hitherto unattempted.
[2] Not only is he mocked for his spouting of Greek poetry, which is unintelligible to all but himself, but he is actually challenged to a duel after writing an unintentionally insulting Greek-inspired ode to a young lady.
This volume also gives an account of Underhill's failed attempt to serve as a teacher in a village school, follows his travels through the Northern and Southern states as a physician, and discusses his service as a surgeon aboard a slave ship that heads to Africa by way of London.
By setting Algiers in opposition to America, this part of the novel leads Underhill to comment on and formulate his conception of what it means to be American.