Interpretative Questions: Why Americans are Restless

2. Why does a society devoted to equal opportunity weaken each individual?

Alexis de Tocqueville was on of the first people to study society and what makes them work. During one point in his life he began to study America and what made it different from Europe. What he found was that in America there was no one that had money and power but everyone started on a level playing field looking for the quickest and shortest route to happiness. Alexis de Tocqueville states, “When all prerogatives of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are open to all and a man’s own energies may bring him to the top of any of the, an ambitious man may think it easy to launch on a great career and feel that he is called to no common destiny. But that is a delusion which experience quickly corrects. The same equality which allows each man to entertain vast hopes makes each man by himself weak his power is limited on every side, though his longings may wander where the will.”(De Tocqueville 166). This quote demonstrates how Alexis de Tocqueville believes that because of equality everyone believes they have that same change of gaining happiness but in reality it is much harder than expected and the man who set out for happiness will fail and return weaker than when he set out.

5. Does Tocqueville think Americans are restless because they don’t know what they want or because what they want is not attainable?

Alexis de Tocqueville believes that Americans are restless because what they want is not attainable. He eludes to this quite a few times in his work but it is most easily spotted in this excerpt, “That is a quality which ever retreats before them without getting quite our of sight, and as it retreats it beckons them onto pursue. Every instant they think they will catch it, and each time it slips through their fingers. They see it close enough to know its charms, but they do not get near enough to enjoy it, and they will be dead before they have fully relished its delights.” (De Tocqueville 168). In this passage you can see De Tocqueville explaining how Americans can see happiness but never actually reach the point that they are striving for. The happiness that they are working so hard to achieve is always one step ahead of them begging them to keep pursuing it.