Tocqueville - Ecclesiastes

Tocqueville was not the kind of book I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a more novel type book than these poems, but I was still mind struck once again. The poem "Ecclesiastes" was the one that stuck out to me the most. I really enjoyed the set up of this writing and I noticed I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. The double lined writing set up was very appealing to me, and the simple yet clear writing style painted a solid image in my head.

The words "trick" and "rule" played a very big role throughout this writing. This led me to begin to think of my own personal definition of the words to try and better understand the writing. I perceived "trick" as something deceiving, or a way of not abiding by the rules, and I saw "rule" and this sort of set way of doing something or expected routine to follow. "The rule is to make them feel they've come too late. The trick is that you're willing to make exceptions." So if I used my own person understandings of these words than to me this would mean that no matter what happens you need to make them feel this certain way. At the same time, I need to sort of deceive that rule and regardless make an exception for them anyway.

Even after reading this over a few times, I am still not sure what to make of it. My mind wants to put a stamp on this poem and declare that I know what point they are trying to make but I'm stuck in this cluster of different meanings. One meaning I will get is that the author is a therapist and trying to help someone, but at the same time is also tricking them behind their back. They are portraying the illusion of helping but in reality they do not care about the other person at all. I really get this feeling from the lines "The rule is to create a commission system. The trick is to get their number." I find this to be a very greedy and not caring description of the author. The bigger hint to me was to pair this line up next to "The trick is to make it personal: No one in the world suffers like you." I feel that these two were placed next to each other on purpose to display this idea of false rescue.