Gateway to Liberty
The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island have been standing side by side in New York’s harbor for over a century (illus.1). In 1886, Liberty was unveiled on Bedloe’s Island, which is called Liberty Is-land today, and six years later, at a time when immigration from Europe was steadily rising, the first federal landing depot for immi-grants in the United States was opened on Ellis Island. Together, these two landmarks express an essential, characteristically American theme: the search for freedom from political and social oppression. In this analytical essay, I will try to examine how these two nation-al landmarks express or reinforce social divisions through their different symbolic meanings and the long, struggled history behind them. The investigation of the history of each landmark will be presented separately. This is because, even though today the two share a common theme, the nineteenth-century ideas that brought them into being were actually almost completely unrelated. The Statue of Liberty was, in fact, an expression of romantic idealism commemo-rating a glorious past. Ellis Island on the other hand was just an attempt to deal with a world wide migration that was bringing hun-dreds of thousands of
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Ellis Island, Statue Liberty, Enlightening World, Isaac Bedloe, Declaration Independence, Tower Paris, Laboulaye Bartholdi, York City, Liberty Bartholdi, Civil War, statue liberty, ellis island, declaration independence, tiny island, york harbor, civil war, liberty ellis, democratic government, liberty ellis island, decided statue, edouard de laboulaye, symbolic gesture, left foot forward, campaign raise funds, section finished statue,
Approximate Word count = 3820
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)
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