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Paternal Command versus Maternal Strength

One of the poem’s key motifs works through a comparison of paternal command and maternal strength. The speaker introduces this comparison in the long opening sentence, which begins with a resolute rejection of an older and outmoded model of a colossus (lines 1–2):

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

This description alludes to an enormous statue known as the Colossus of Rhodes, which once straddled the inlet to the harbor on the Greek island of Rhodes. This “brazen giant of Greek fame” is a patriarchal figure whom the speaker associates with imperial conquest. He assumes a masculine stance as if to claim ownership over the land on which he stands. In this way, the old colossus projects a form of power based on an attitude of being in command. In the second part of the opening sentence, the speaker contrasts this paternal attitude of command with the maternal strength of the New Colossus (lines 3–6):

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.

Here, the speaker describes the New Colossus not just as feminine but as explicitly maternal. That is, she is a mother figure whose stature is welcoming rather than imposing. Yet her receptive attitude is also the source of her strength. She may look out on the world with “mild eyes” (line 7), but her compassionate gaze also has the power to “command / The air-bridged harbor” (lines 7–8) over which she presides. Thus, as the “Mother of Exiles,” she both welcomes and protects.

Hyphenated Compounds

In English, when writers wish to combine words to make new meanings, they often use hyphenated compounds. Lazarus appears to be particularly fond of hyphenated compounds, since she uses five in “The New Colossus”—a surprisingly high number given the poem’s relative brevity. The first compound in the poem comes in the third line: “sea-washed.” Three more follow in quick succession, all within the same sentence: “beacon-hand” (line 6), “world-wide” (line 7), and “air-bridged” (line 8). The fifth and final compound comes in line 13: “tempest-tost.” These compounds are notable for the way they elevate Lazarus’s language. They punctuate the poem with moments of emphasis that are also tinged with an ennobling aura of idealism, thus reflecting the promise of a new life in the New World. In addition to their rhetorical function, the hyphenated compounds also bear a suggestive relation to the new kinds of identities that immigrants will create in the United States. That is, they will forge hyphenated identities that retain a memory of their place of origin and link it to their new home: Irish-American, Polish-American, Scandinavian-American, and so on.

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