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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Democracy in America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Liberty, Equality, and Tyranny
Checks and Balances
Civic and Religious Institutions
Individualism and Materialism
Politics, Customs, and Culture
Summary
Analysis
Tocqueville asks why Americans, who so prefer plain language, sometimes use pompous, inflated diction on occasion. He answers that while democratic citizens are usually concerned with a small, puny object (themselves), if they try to gaze upon society at large their ideas grow vague and confused. Authors tend to inflate their imaginations without being concerned for accuracy or proportion. He fears that poetry in democracies will continue to lose itself in the clouds and get bogged down with incoherent images and descriptions.
This chapter is essentially an extension of the previous one; Tocqueville’s arguments about democratic poets’ tendency to embrace the destiny of all humankind are directly related to his characterization of democratic language as pompous and inflated. Again, without specific examples it’s not always clear how to independently judge Tocqueville’s considerations.
Themes
