After reading the first chapter of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Chapter 1, it was very interesting to me how he set the scene for the reader. If you think about it, Tocqueville is a French man who is producing this book for people all around the world to be informed about North America, most of whom have never been to the continent before. So the amount of detail Tocqueville adds to the first chapter of the book to give the reader the most information that he can about the lay of the land, the typography of the mountains, the life giving Mississippi River, and the triangular shape of the continent, all give great imagery to paint for the reader the great landscape of North America. This sets the scene perfectly for someone who has never stepped foot on North American soil and wants just a taste of what it feels like.
I also wanted to mention that I would like to know and understand what the “Indians” first impressions of the Europeans coming to their land made them feel. These people have been isolated on the continent for 10’s of thousands of years with no communication or means of it to any other groups of people. It must have felt like how we picture greeting aliens for the first time, mainly form the movie Independence Day, with their never before seen technology that overshadows even our greatest inventions. I wonder how the first Indian described to the other members of his tribe what he saw, some huge ship with white sails heading towards them with white men on board.
Just some detailed imagery and questions can be conjectured from the first chapter of his book, and I am very interested to learn how he will continue to challenge and cause me to think throughout the book.