The New Colossus: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a passing reference to a literary or historical person, place, or event, usually made without explicit identification. The major allusion in Lazarus’s poem is a reference to an older colossus to which the New Colossus stands in contrast. The speaker makes this contrast explicit in the opening lines, which present an uninviting image of the old colossus:

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

The “brazen giant of Greek fame” referenced here is the Colossus of Rhodes. Though no longer standing, the Colossus of Rhodes was an enormous statue that once straddled the inlet to the harbor on the Greek island of Rhodes. The statue existed in the third century before the Common Era, and it’s remembered today as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. For the speaker of Lazarus’s poem, however, the Colossus of Rhodes is a symbol for the grand ambitions of empire and the masculine drive for conquest. Whereas this old colossus stands astride the land in the guise of a patriarchal conqueror, the New Colossus is a maternal figure who guides bedraggled exiles toward safe harbor.

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (uh-PAW-struh-fee) is a rhetorical device that occurs whenever a speaker directly addresses an absent person, or else an object or abstract entity. Lazarus uses this device in the sonnet’s sestet, where the New Colossus explicitly addresses the “ancient lands” (lines 9–14):

“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!”

With these lines, the New Colossus addresses the nations of the Old World (i.e., Europe), instructing them to send their most desperate people from their shores to hers. What’s remarkable about this use of apostrophe is the parallel structure Lazarus achieves through a technique known as diacope (die-ACK-uh-pee). Diacope is a type of repetition that involves the recurrence of the same word or phrase, separated by one or more words. Though its effects are often subtle, diacope is a sophisticated rhetorical technique that can lend added weight to a given utterance. It’s especially powerful in lists, where a repeating, parallel structure allows the rhetorical force of the language to accumulate. This is precisely the tactic that Lazarus uses in the sestet, much of which is organized around the repetition of “your”—“your storied pomp . . . your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses . . . your teeming shore.” The word your appears five times in just four lines, each time amplifying the speaker’s address to the “ancient lands.”

Assonance, Consonance, and Alliteration

These three concepts are siblings, in that they all refer to the repetition of certain sounds in adjacent or nearby words. Assonance specifically refers to the repetition of vowel sounds, whereas consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Alliteration refers to the repetition of any sound at the beginning of adjacent or nearby words. Lazarus uses all three techniques in concert throughout the poem, weaving a dense tapestry of language. As an example, consider the various A sounds as well as the long I and short O sounds that feature prominently in the opening sentence (lines 1–6):

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.

Next, consider the liberal use of L, M/N, and S sounds at work through the same passage:

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.

Focusing only the case of the S sounds, note how these sounds create both alliteration and consonance through the way they appear in different parts of different words—for example, “sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand.” Of additional interest here is the way the S sounds in the passage shift from being voiceless and sibilant (e.g., “sunset”) to voiced and buzzing (e.g., “imprisoned”). Taken together, these sonic techniques bring a remarkable richness to the speaker’s language, endowing it with an appropriately elevated rhetorical sophistication.

Personification

Personification refers to a particular use of figurative language in which a poet or speaker attributes human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object. In the case of “The New Colossus,” the poem’s speaker attributes distinctly human qualities to an inanimate statue. In the first eight lines of the poem, the speaker’s language is only vaguely personifying. Although these words describe the New Colossus as a maternal figure who extends her “beacon-hand” (line 6) to welcome the world’s exiles, this language is largely metaphorical. That is, the speaker mainly aims to describe the statue’s symbolic significance. The only strong suggestion of personification comes in lines 7–8, when the speaker notes how the statue’s “mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.” The use of command here has a clear personifying intention, one that becomes even more explicit when, in the final six lines, the speaker ventriloquizes the New Colossus. The statue does in fact speak, though only “with silent lips” (line 10). Thus, to ensure that the statue’s human-like intentions are understood, the speaker adopts the New Colossus’s voice and conveys her message.

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