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• 1 media/shoes ps.jpg 2016-08-19T04:32:20-07:00 The New Colossus 2 Emma Lazarus, 1883 image_header 2017-07-12T13:41:42-07:00 Emma Lazarus, the highly educated and intellectual daughter of a wealthy Jewish family, wrote this poem as a contribution to a fundraising campaign for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1883.  Lazarus became interested in her own Jewish background when she began to do charitable work for the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society with Russian Jews who fled religious persecution [pogroms] by coming to the United States. Lazarus’s sonnet was engraved on a plaque on the pedestal in 1903, creating an association between the statue and immigration that would have been foreign to the French who gave the statue as a gift recognizing the republican values of both countries. Since 1945, “The New Colossus” rests above the main entrance to Lady Liberty.
   
  Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
  With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
  Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
  A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
  Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
  Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
  The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
  
  "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
  With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
   
  Questions to Think About and Discuss
  1. The original [old] Colossus was built by the ancient Greeks to commemorate a military victory. How does Emma Lazarus contrast that to values she attributes to the “new colossus”?
  2. Emma Lazarus’s poem, installed on a brass plaque at the site of the Statue of Liberty, is a public, political statement of American welcome to diverse individuals and groups. Nevertheless, controversies about immigration have ignited regularly since the country’s early days. Are public political statements of American values (or some Americans’ values) important, and, if so, why?
  3. Some people have interpreted the word “refuse” in the poem to mean people who were refused entry by other countries, such as the Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. Others believe “refuse” refers to trash or waste, perhaps a subtle reference to dismal conditions on Ward’s Island where Emma Lazarus taught English to Russian Jewish immigrants. Neither interpretation is “correct”; which do you prefer and why?