Composition

In what follows, we will outline the poem’s outer and inner composition. We will look at the way “Kidnapped” by Ruperake Petaia is structured and its content, aspects that will give you an overview of the text…

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Outer composition

The poem is organised in seven stanzas of different lengths, written in free verse. The longest stanza is nine lines long and the shortes…

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Inner composition

The poem’s inner composition (the way the content is organised) reveals that each stanza conveys a different image or idea.

The title, “Kidnapped”, is metaphorical as the poem uses the metaphor of kidnapping to describe the educational system implemented in colonies.

The poem is the account of a boy from the colonies—he is probably Samoan, like the author—who studies in a Western educational system, and perceives his education as kidnapping him from his culture.

In the first stanza, the spe…