As the seventeen-year-old Karl Rossmann — who had been shipped off to America by his unfortunate parents after having been seduced by a maid, who'd then had a child by him — sailed slowly into New York's harbor, he suddenly caught sight of the Statue of Liberty, which a sudden shaft of sunlight had highlighted. The sword in her hand seemed as though she'd just raised it up, while the wind blew freely around her.

"So high," he said to himself, forgetting to disembark and then being pushed up against the railing by a growing throng of porters...

from Amerika by Franz Kafka