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Declaration Of Sentiments And The New Colossus

Decent Essays

In 2012, Stephen Brighton gave a speech at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting explaining that the term “The American Dream”. It was coined by a writer named J.T. Adams and is defined as the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity. The idea behind the American Dream was that it was available to anyone who came to America (Brighton 4). “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus illustrates how the American dream and the statue of liberty welcome immigrants from across the world. Although, in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” the author discusses the inequality of men and women and how the American dream was not being fulfilled to women. The theme of the American dream is present in both “Declaration of Sentiments” and “The New Colossus” by discussing the liberties to which Americans should be entitled, presenting the idea that opportunity exist in America for anybody to make a living, and that everybody is welcomed into American to experience the freedom, equality and opportunity of the American dream. …show more content…

She states that men and women both have rights and “among these [rights] are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their power from the consent of the governed”(Stanton 287). She goes on to discuss how these basic rights, what it means to be American, are not being given to women and that women don’t have a fair chance at the American dream. In “The New Colossus” the author similarly discusses the liberties people coming to America are given. The poem states “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; this refers to the masses of immigrants moving to American (Lazarus 11). They are coming to “breathe free” as in experience the liberties and freedoms that the American dream have to

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