The narrator of the poem is an individual with a mixed ethnic identity, descended from both European immigrants and Native Americans. Visiting Ellis Island nine decades after their grandparents' arrival, they reflect on the historical realities of the American Dream. They feel a profound physical and spiritual connection to the land's original inhabitants, carrying the painful histories of both ancestries within them.

Two young immigrants from Europe who eventually become the speaker's grandparents. They flee a literal and metaphorical sickness and the oppressive empires of old Europe to seek freedom in America. Their arrival represents the traditional narrative of hope, as they arrive in a new country with desires of owning their own forests and meadows.

The indigenous peoples who inhabited America before European colonization introduced the concept of property rights. They live in harmony with nature, moving with the cycles of the changing moon and possessing an innate knowledge of the earth. Their communal way of life is disrupted and destroyed by the land ownership systems brought by incoming European immigrants.

A towering copper monument that personifies America's promise to incoming European immigrants. To the new arrivals, she represents freedom and the opportunity to finally own land after generations of poverty. However, she also stands as a symbol of the ideological colonization that inevitably displaces the indigenous population already living on the continent.