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"Ellis Island" by Joseph Bruchac
139
GOAL!
Question 4
In my opinion, the destination of a trip is more important than the journey. The journey is fueled out of a burning desire to get to the destination. Why did Christopher Columbus risk his life, well-being, and comfort in 1492? It was for what he could get out of the destination, the publicity, the trade, the riches, etc. Sure, the hardships endured on a journey will lead to some self-discovery, and that is important. However, what is so important that we go on the journey? The destination, once again, people don't just go on a journey. It is worth pointing out that there are almost no people in our history textbooks who wandered around aimlessly.
Question 3 Continued
The journey from what we have to something better also involves sacrificing the present good in our lives. This is exemplified in the poem when he says: "leaving the sickness, the cold Empires of Europe." Even though leaving sickness and old drab environment, the immigrants had to leave behind everything that they had ever known, maybe some family, friends, neighborhoods, environments, to start out in a place unknown to them, just for a new life.
"Ellis Island" by Joseph Bruchac
Question 3
This poem relates to our unit theme "Living Without" mainly in the first stanza. I think that lines like "waited the long days of quarantine" sums up the fact that in order to get what we want, which in this case, was a new life in the US, we must suffer some difficulty along the way. There are many stories of great explorers who had to go without food and eat mold and rat droppings to stay alive.
Question 2 Continued
In the third stanza, Joseph references the "native lands within this nation." Even though the Island represents many answered dreams of new life in the USA, it also couldn't be there without the taking over of native civilizations in the fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen hundreds. The Native Americans were the ones who "followed the changing moon, knowledge of the seasons in their veins."
Question 2: What Is This Poem About
Joshua Murray, Period 2
The first part of this poem is about immigrants who are coming to the United States in the early to mid nineteen hundreds by way of the Ellis Island immigration center. The speaker's grandparents immigrated from Slovakia, and in the first two stanzas Ellis Island is portrayed as a great place, "nine decades the answerer of dreams." The island represented ninety years of generations who visited Ellis Island.