Kidnapped

The poem ‘Kidnapped’ was written in 1974 by Ruperake Petaia. He was born on April 11 in 1951 and he is a poet and writer from Samoa who studied at the University of the South Pacific. Western Samoa had been a German and a New Zealand colony before they gained their independence in 1962. Eastern Samoa was colonized by the Americans and is still an American territory.

The poem is written in ordinary plainspoken English, a vernacular voiced poem. It is written from the point of view of a boy, we can assume is from the pacific and probably Petaia himself, which is taking a western education. The poem explores themes about the effects of colonialism and Western influences on Samoan culture and society, it voices the perspective of the colonized and rejects the ideologies of Western imperialism. The text is very satirical and it includes many metaphors. The title “Kidnapped” is a metaphor for when the boy started school, implying that the western teachers (colonists) stole him from his home and family. The ”threats” his parents received and the “ransom fees” they paid are metaphors for letters with bills and school tuition fee. The satire is used to criticize the western education system. He felt like he was forced to take an expensive western education that took him away from his culture. Petaia uses phrases like “Mama and Papa grew poorer and poorer” and “I grew whiter and whiter”. It expresses his frustration over learning from the colonizers at the cost of the loss of traditional Samoan knowledge.

He makes references to politicians like Churchill, Garibaldi, Hitler and Mao. I get the impression that he doesn’t feel that learning about them is relevant to his life. But when he refers to Guevara he says “Guevara pointed a revolution at my brains”. It could be an indication that he felt like revolutionizing against the colonists in his own country.

In the last paragraph of the poem he talks satirical about his “release fifteen years after” from school to “applause from fellow victims”, referring to the other students, with “a piece of paper certifying my release”. It sounds like he is bitter and angry for having spent so much time in the schools and that all he gained from it was a diploma.

The poem explores themes about the effects of colonialism and Western influences on Samoan culture and society, it voices the perspective of the colonized and rejects the ideologies of Western imperialism. One can argue that another theme is psychological colonization. The boy was pressured to take a western education, his parents had to pay for it and the things he learned there probably didn’t reflect his Samoan culture and traditions. A young boy born in the pacific is pushed towards the same mindset as the people from the west that has colonized his home, when he really wants to learn traditional Samoan knowledge. That is a good example of psychological colonization and marginalization of his culture.

            At last I want to mention that Petaia only focuses on the negatives of western education, and not the positives. Although he didn’t want the education and he feels like it took him away from his own culture, it can help him get a good job and it provides knowledge he wouldn’t have learned without taking western education.