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Analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 31, 2019 • ( 0 )

Many critics maintain that the impulse that prompted Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616) to begin his great novel was a satiric one: He desired to satirize chivalric romances. As the elderly Alonso Quixano the Good (if that is his name) pores over the pages of these books in his study, his “brain dries up” and he imagines himself to be the champion who will take up the vanished cause of knighterrantry and wander the world righting wrongs, helping the helpless, defending the cause of justice, all for the greater glory of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso and his God.

As he leaves his village before dawn, clad in rusty armor and riding his broken-down nag, the mad knight becomes Don Quixote de la Mancha. His first foray is brief, and he is brought back home by friends from his native village. Despite the best efforts of his friends and relations, the mad old man embarks on a second journey, this time accompanied by a peasant from his village, Sancho Panza, who becomes the knight’s squire. The Don insists on finding adventure everywhere, mistaking windmills for giants, flocks of sheep for attacking armies, puppet shows for real life. His squire provides a voice of down-to-earth reason, but Quixote always insists that vile enchanters have transformed the combatants to embarrass and humiliate him. Don Quixote insists on his vision of the ideal in the face of the cold facts of the world; Sancho Panza maintains his proverbial peasant wisdom in the face of his master’s madness.

In their travels and adventures, they encounter life on the roads of Spain. Sometimes they are treated with respect— for example, by “the gentleman in green” who invites them to his home and listens to Quixote with genuine interest—but more often they are ridiculed, as when the Duke and Duchess bring the knight and squire to their estate only for the purpose of mocking them. Finally, a young scholar from Quixote’s native village, Sampson Carrasco, defeats the old knight in battle and forces him to return to his home, where he dies peacefully, having renounced his mad visions and lunatic behavior.

While it is necessary to acknowledge the satiric intent of Cervantes’ novel, the rich fictional world of Don Quixote de la Mancha utterly transcends its local occasion. On the most personal level, the novel can be viewed as one of the most intimate evaluations of a life ever penned by a great author. When Don Quixote decides to take up the cause of knight-errantry, he opens himself to a life of ridicule and defeat, a life that resembles Cervantes’ own life, with its endless reversals of fortune, humiliations, and hopeless struggles. Out of this life of failure and disappointment Cervantes created the “mad knight,” but he also added the curious human nobility and the refusal to succumb to despair in the face of defeat that turns Quixote into something more than a comic character or a ridiculous figure to be mocked. Although there are almost no points in the novel where actual incidents from Cervantes’ life appear directly or even transformed into fictional disguise, the tone and the spirit, the succession of catastrophes with only occasional moments of slight glory, and the resilience of human nature mark the novel as the most personal work of the author, the one where his singularly difficult life and his profoundly complex emotional responses to that life found form and structure.

If the novel is the record of Cervantes’ life, the fiction also records a moment in Spanish national history when fortunes were shifting and tides turning. At the time of Cervantes’ birth, Spain’s might and glory were at their peak. The wealth from conquests of Mexico and Peru returned to Spain, commerce boomed, and artists recorded the sense of national pride with magnificent energy and power. By the time Don Quixote de la Mancha was published, the Spanish Empire was beginning its decline. A series of military disasters, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English and the revolt of Flanders, had shaken the once mighty nation. In the figure of Don Quixote, the greatest of a richly remembered past combines with the hard facts of age, weakness, and declining power. The character embodies a moment of Spanish history and the Spanish people’s own sense of vanishing glory in the face of irreversible decline.

Don Quixote de la Mancha also stands as the greatest literary embodiment of the Counter-Reformation. Throughout Europe, the Reformation was moving with the speed of new ideas, changing the religious landscape of country after country. Spain stood proud as a Catholic nation, resisting any changes. Standing alone against the flood of reform sweeping Europe displayed a kind of willed madness, but the nobility and determination of Quixote to fight for his beliefs, no matter what the rest of the world maintained, reflects the strength of the Spanish will at this time. Cervantes was a devout and loyal believer, a supporter of the Church, and Don Quixote may be the greatest fictional Catholic hero, the battered knight of the Counter-Reformation.

The book also represents fictionally the various sides of the Spanish spirit and the Spanish temper. In the divisions and contradictions found between the Knight of the Sad Countenance and his unlikely squire, Sancho Panza, Cervantes paints the two faces of the Spanish soul: The Don is idealistic, sprightly, energetic, and cheerful, even in the face of overwhelming odds, but he is also overbearing, domineering Sancho, who is earthy, servile, and slothful. The two characters seem unlikely companions and yet they form a whole, the one somehow incomplete without the other and linked throughout the book through their dialogues and debates. In drawing master and servant, Cervantes presents the opposing truths of the spirit of his native land.

Characterization

The book can also be seen as a great moment in the development of fiction, the moment when the fictional character was freed into the real world of choice and change. When the gentleman of La Mancha took it into his head to become a knight-errant and travel through the world redressing wrongs and winning eternal glory, the face of fiction permanently changed. Character in fiction became dynamic, unpredictable, and spontaneous. Until that time, character in fiction had existed in service of the story, but now the reality of change and psychological energy and freedom of the will became a permanent hallmark of fiction, as it already was of drama and narrative poetry. The title character’s addled wits made the new freedom all the more impressive. The determination of Don Quixote, the impact of his vision on the world, and the world’s hard reality as it impinges on the Don make for shifting balances and constant alterations in fortune that are psychologically believable. The shifting balance of friendship, devotion, and perception between the knight and his squire underlines this freedom, as does the power of other characters in the book to affect Don Quixote’s fortunes directly: the niece, the housekeeper, the priest, the barber, Sampson Carrasco, the Duke, and the Duchess. There is a fabric of interaction throughout the novel, and characters in the novel change as they encounter new adventures, new people, and new ideas.

One way Cervantes chronicles this interaction is in dialogue. Dialogue had not played a significant or defining role in fiction before Don Quixote de la Mancha . As knight and squire ride across the countryside and engage in conversation, dialogue becomes the expression of character, idea, and reality. In the famous episode with windmills early in the first part of the novel (when Quixote views the windmills on the plain and announces that they are giants that he will wipe from the face of the earth, and Sancho innocently replies, “What giants?”), the dialogue not only carries the comedy but also becomes the battleground on which the contrasting visions of life engage one another—to the delight of the reader. The long exchanges between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza provide priceless humor but also convey two different realities that meet, struggle, and explode in volleys of words. In giving his characters authentic voices that carry ideas, Cervantes brought to fiction a new truth that remains a standard of comparison.

The Narrator

Don Quixote de la Mancha is also as modern as the most experimental of later fiction. Throughout the long novel, Cervantes plays with the nature of the narrator, raising constant difficult questions as to who is telling the story and to what purpose. In the riotously funny opening page of the novel, the reader encounters a narrator not only unreliable but also lacking in the basic facts necessary to tell the story. He chooses not to tell the name of the village where his hero lives, and he is not even sure of his hero’s name, yet the narrator protests that the narrative must be entirely truthful.

In chapter 9, as Don Quixote is preparing to do battle with the Basque, the narrative stops; the narrator states that the manuscript from which he is culling this story is mutilated and incomplete. Fortunately, some time later in Toledo, he says, he came upon an old Arabic manuscript by Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli that continues the adventures. For the remainder of the novel, the narrator claims to be providing a translation of this manuscript—the manuscript and the second narrator, the Arab historian, both lacking authority and credibility. In the second part of the novel, the narrator and the characters themselves are aware of the first part of the novel as well as of a “false Quixote,” a spurious second part written by an untalented Spanish writer named Avallaneda who sought to capitalize on the popularity of the first part of Don Quixote de la Mancha by publishing his own sequel. The “false Quixote” is on the narrator’s mind, the characters’ minds, and somehow on the mind of Cide Hamete Benengeli. These shifting perspectives, the multiple narrative voices, the questionable reliability of the narrators, and the “false” second part are all tricks, narrative sleight of hand as complex as anything found in the works of Faulkner , Vladimir Nabokov , or Jorge Luis Borges . In his Lectures on Don Quixote (1983), Nabokov oddly makes no reference to Cervantes’ narrative games; perhaps the old Spanish master’s shadow still loomed too close to the modern novelist.

None of these approaches to the novel, however, appropriate as they may be, can begin to explain fully the work’s enduring popularity or the strange manner in which the knight and his squire have ridden out of the pages of a book into the other artistic realms of orchestral music, opera, ballet, and painting, where other artists have presented their visions of Quixote and Sancho.Acurrent deeper and more abiding than biography, history, national temper, or literary landmark flows through the book and makes it speak to all manner of readers in all ages.

Early in the novel, Cervantes begins to dilute his strong satiric intent. The reader can laugh with delight at the inanity of the mad knight but never with the wicked, unalloyed glee that pure satire evokes. The knight begins to loom over the landscape; his madness brushes sense; his ideals demand defense. The reader finds him- or herself early in the novel taking an attitude equivalent to that of the two young women of easy virtue who see Quixote when he arrives at an inn, which he believes to be a castle, on his first foray. Quixote calls them “two beauteous maidens . . . taking air at the gate of the castle,” and they fall into helpless laughter, confronted with such a mad vision of themselves as “maidens.” In time, however, because of Quixote’s insistence on the truth of his vision, they help him out of his armor and set a table for him. They treat him as a knight, not as a mad old fool; he treats them as ladies, and they behave as ladies. The laughter stops, and, for a pure moment, life transforms itself and human beings transcend themselves.

Contradictions

This mingling of real chivalry and transcendent ideals with the absurdity of character and mad action creates the tensions in the book as well as its strange melancholy beauty and haunting poignancy. The book is unlike any other ever written. John Berryman has commented on this split between the upheld ideal and the riotously real, observing that the reader “does not know whether to laugh or cry, and does both.” This old man with his dried-up brain, with his squire who has no “salt in his brain pan,” with his rusty armor, his pathetic steed, and his lunatic vision that changes windmills into giants and flocks of sheep into attacking armies, this crazy old fool becomes a real knight-errant. The true irony of the book and its history is that Don Quixote actually becomes a model for knighthood. He may be a foolish, improbable knight, but with his squire, horse, and armor he has ridden into the popular imagination of the world not only as a ridiculous figure but also as a champion; he is a real knight whose vision may often cloud, who sees what he wants to see, but he is also one who demonstrates real virtue and courage and rises in his rhetoric and daring action to real heights of greatness.

Perhaps Cervantes left a clue as to the odd shift in his intention. The contradictory titles he assigns to his knight suggest this knowledge. The comic, melancholy strain pervades “Knight of the Sad Countenance” in the first part of the novel, and the heroic strain is seen in the second part when the hero acquires the new sobriquet “Knight of the Lions.” The first title comes immediately after his adventure with a corpse and is awarded him by his realistic companion, Sancho. Quixote has attacked a funeral procession, seeking to avenge the dead man. Death, however, cannot be overcome; the attempted attack merely disrupts the funeral, and the valiant knight breaks the leg of an attending churchman. The name “Knight of the Sad Countenance” fits Quixote’s stance here and through much of the book. Many of the adventures he undertakes are not only misguided but also unwinnable. Quixote may be Christlike, but he is not Christ, and he cannot conquer Death.

The adventure with the lions earns for him his second title and offers the other side of his journey as a knight. Encountering a cage of lions being taken to the king, Quixote becomes determined to fight them. Against all protest, he takes his stand, and the cage is opened. One of the lions stretches, yawns, looks at Quixote, and lies down. Quixote proclaims a great victory and awards himself the name “Knight of the Lions.” A delightfully comic episode, the scene can be viewed in two ways—as a nonadventure that the knight claims as a victory or as a genuine moment of triumph as the knight undertakes an outlandish adventure and proves his genuine bravery while the king of beasts realizes the futility of challenging the unswerving old knight. Quixote, by whichever route, emerges as conqueror. Throughout his journeys, he often does emerge victorious, despite his age, despite his illusions, despite his dried-up brain.

When, at the book’s close, he is finally defeated and humiliated by Sampson Carrasco and forced to return to his village, the life goes out of him. The knight Don Quixote is replaced, however, on the deathbed by Alonso Quixano the Good. Don Quixote does not die, for the elderly gentleman regains his wits and becomes a new character. Don Quixote cannot die, for he is the creation of pure imagination. Despite the moving and sober conclusion, the reader cannot help but sense that the death scene being played out does not signify the end of Don Quixote. The knight escapes and remains free. He rides out of the novel, with his loyal companion Sancho at his side, into the golden realm of myth. He becomes the model knight he hoped to be. He stands tall with his spirit, his ideals, his rusty armor, and his broken lance as the embodiment of man’s best intentions and impossible folly. As Dostoevski so wisely said, when the Lord calls the Last Judgment, man should take with him this book and point to it, for it reveals all of man’s deep and fatal mystery, his glory and his sorrow.

Major works Plays: El trato de Argel, pr. 1585 (The Commerce of Algiers, 1870); Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, 1615 (includes Pedro de Urdemalas [Pedro the Artful Dodger, 1807], El juez de los divorcios [The Divorce Court Judge, 1919], Los habladores [Two Chatterboxes, 1930], La cueva de Salamanca [The Cave of Salamanca, 1933], La elección de los alcaldes de Daganzo [Choosing a Councilman in Daganzo, 1948], La guarda cuidadosa [The Hawk-Eyed Sentinel, 1948], El retablo de las maravillas [The Wonder Show, 1948], El rufián viudo llamada Trampagos [Trampagos the Pimp Who Lost His Moll, 1948], El viejo celoso [The Jealous Old Husband, 1948], and El vizcaíno fingido [The Basque Imposter, 1948]); El cerco de Numancia, pb. 1784 (wr. 1585; Numantia: A Tragedy, 1870; also known as The Siege of Numantia); The Interludes of Cervantes, 1948. poetry: Viaje del Parnaso, 1614 (The Voyage to Parnassus, 1870).

Bibliography Bloom, Harold, ed. Cervantes. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. _______. Cervantes’s “Don Quixote.” Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001. Cascardi, Anthony J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Castillo, David R. (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2001. Close, A. J. Cervantes and the Comic Mind of His Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Durán, Manuel. Cervantes. New York: Twayne, 1974. Hart, Thomas R. Cervantes’ Exemplary Fictions: A Study of the “Novelas ejemplares.” Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. McCrory, Donald P. No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel de Cervantes. Chester Springs, Pa.: Peter Owen, 2002. Mancing, Howard. Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on “Don Quixote.” Edited by Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Riley, E. C. Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel. 1962. Reprint. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 1992. Weiger, John G. The Substance of Cervantes. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Williamson, Edwin, ed. Cervantes and the Modernists: The Question of Influence. London: Tamesis, 1994. Source :  Rollyson, Carl. Critical Survey Of Long Fiction . 4th ed. New Jersey: Salem Press, 2010

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Guide to the classics: Don Quixote, the world’s first modern novel – and one of the best

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Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember…

This line, arguably the most famous in the history of Spanish literature, is the opening of The Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, the first modern novel .

Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, this is the story of Alonso Quijano, a 16th-century Spanish hidalgo , a noble, who is so passionate about reading that he leaves home in search of his own chivalrous adventures. He becomes a knight-errant himself: Don Quixote de la Mancha. By imitating his admired literary heroes, he finds new meaning in his life: aiding damsels in distress, battling giants and righting wrongs… mostly in his own head.

But Don Quixote is much more. It is a book about books, reading, writing, idealism vs. materialism, life … and death. Don Quixote is mad. “His brain’s dried up” due to his reading, and he is unable to separate reality from fiction, a trait that was appreciated at the time as funny . However, Cervantes was also using Don Quixote’s insanity to probe the eternal debate between free will and fate. The misguided hero is actually a man fighting against his own limitations to become who he dreams to be.

Open-minded, well-travelled, and very well-educated, Cervantes was, like Don Quixote himself, an avid reader. He also served the Spanish crown in adventures that he would later include in the novel. After defeating the Ottoman Empire in the battle of Lepanto (and losing the use of his left hand, becoming “the one-handed of Lepanto”), Cervantes was captured and held for ransom in Algiers.

This autobiographical episode and his escape attempts are depicted in “The Captive’s Tale” (in Don Quixote Part I), where the character recalls “a Spanish soldier named something de Saavedra”, referring to Cervantes’s second last name. Years later, back in Spain, he completed Don Quixote in prison, due to irregularities in his accounts while he worked for the government.

Tilting at windmills

In Part I, Quijano with his new name, Don Quixote, gathers other indispensable accessories to any knight-errant: his armour; a horse, Rocinante; and a lady, an unwitting peasant girl he calls Dulcinea of Toboso, in whose name he will perform great deeds of chivalry.

While Don Quixote recovers from a disastrous first campaign as a knight, his close friends, the priest and the barber, decide to examine the books in his library. Their comments about his chivalric books combine literary criticism with a parody of the Inquisition ’s practices of burning texts associated with the devil. Although a few volumes are saved (Cervantes’s own La Galatea among them), most books are burned for their responsibility in Don Quixote’s madness.

In Don Quixote’s second expedition, the peasant Sancho Panza joins him as his faithful squire, with the hopes of becoming the governor of his own island one day. The duo diverges in every aspect. Don Quixote is tall and thin, Sancho is short and fat ( panza means “pot belly”). Sancho is an illiterate commoner and responds to Don Quixote’s elaborate speeches with popular proverbs. The mismatched couple has remained as a key literary archetype since then.

In perhaps the most famous scene from the novel, Don Quixote sees three windmills as fearful giants that he must combat, which is where the phrase “tilting at windmills” comes from. At the end of Part I, Don Quixote and Sancho are tricked into returning to their village. Sancho has become “quixotized”, now increasingly obsessed with becoming rich by ruling his own island.

Don Quixote was an enormous success, being translated from Spanish into the main European languages and even reaching North America. In 1614 an unknown author, Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, published an apocryphal second part. Cervantes incorporated this spurious Don Quixote and its characters into his own Part II, adding yet another chapter to the history of modern narrative.

Whereas Part I was a reaction to chivalric romances, Part II is a reaction to Part I. The book is set only one month after Don Quixote and Sancho’s return from their first literary quest, after they are notified that a book retelling their story has been published (Part I).

The rest of Part II operates as a game of mirrors, recalling and rewriting episodes. New characters, such as aristocrats who have also read Part I, use their knowledge to play tricks on Don Quixote and Sancho for their own amusement. Deceived by the rest of the characters, Sancho and a badly wounded Don Quixote finally return again to their village.

After being in bed for several days, Don Quixote’s final hour arrives. He decides to abandon his existence as Don Quixote for good, giving up his literary identity and physically dying. He leaves Sancho – his best and most faithful reader – in tears, and avoids further additions by any future imitators by dying.

The original unreliable narrator

The narrator of Part I’s prologue claims to write a sincere and uncomplicated story. Nothing is further from reality. Distancing himself from textual authority, the narrator declares that he merely compiled a manuscript translated by some Arab historian – an untrustworthy source at the time. The reader has to decide what’s real and what’s not.

Don Quixote is also a book made of preexisting books. Don Quixote is obsessed with chivalric romances, and includes episodes parodying other narrative subgenres such as pastoral romances , picaresque novels and Italian novellas (of which Cervantes himself wrote a few ).

Don Quixote’s transformation from nobleman to knight-errant is particularly profound given the events in Europe at the time the novel was published. Spain had been reconquered by Christian royals after centuries of Islamic presence. Social status, ethnicity and religion were seen as determining a person’s future, but Don Quixote defied this. “I know who I am,” he answered roundly to whoever tried to convince him of his “true” and original identity.

Don Quixote through the ages

Many writers have been inspired by Don Quixote: from Goethe, Stendhal, Melville , Flaubert and Dickens, to Borges , Faulkner and Nabokov.

In fact, for many critics, the whole history of the novel could justifiably be considered “ a variation of the theme of Don Quixote ”. Since its early success, there have also been many valuable English translations of the novel. John Rutherford and more recently Edith Grossman have been praised for their versions .

Apart from literature, Don Quixote has inspired many creative works . Based on the episode of the wedding of Camacho in Part II, Marius Petipa choreographed a ballet in 1896. Also created for the stage, Man of La Mancha , the 1960s’ Broadway musical, is one of the most popular reimaginings. In 1992, the State Spanish TV launched a highly successful adaptation of Part I . Terry Gilliam’s much-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is only the most recent addition to a long list of films inspired by Don Quixote .

More than 400 years after its publication and great success, Don Quixote is widely considered the world’s best book by other celebrated authors. In our own times, full of windmills and giants, Don Quixote’s still-valuable message is that the way we filter reality through any ideology affects our perception of the world.

The headline of this article was updated on August 10 to clarify that Don Quixote is considered the first “modern” novel, not the first novel.

• Guide to the Classics

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Themes and Analysis

Don quixote, by miguel de cervantes.

Miguel de Cervantes' classic book, 'Don Quixote,' presents a plethora of themes for the reader to consider, and they range from delusion to madness to knighthood to romance, among other themes.

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Cervantes’ mission is to aptly describe the idiosyncrasy of a man who is determined to go against the odds to save the world from all evil and corruption. However, the author does not fail to leave the reader with a stern warning about how much of a toll this nearly impossible mission can have on anyone who tries to achieve such a feat.

‘ Don Quixote’ Themes

The theme of quixotry is easily the commonest throughout the book, and Cervantes certainly manages to imprint this on the entire storyline of ‘ Don Quixote ‘. By definition, quixotry entails a usually wild, extravagant, and delusional pursuit of an idea or knightly honor or romantics, and this is the fuel that drives ‘ Don Quixote ‘ into his many journeys.

Quixote’s investment in chivalric books leads to his disillusionment of the world, and he finds himself believing that he can make a significantly positive change to the ways that people live in society. Against social order and institutional convention, he does so, pursuing new reforms on the better way to live even though these ideas are frowned at by other people, including the so-called groups he claims need saving.

Imagination, Delusion And Madness

A good number of fights ‘ Don Quixote ‘ gets involved in are described by Cervantes as though they involved real people, but in fact, these fights are merely a figment of Quixote’s imagination.

The most notable of these fights is the one involving windmills which Quixote sees as giant warriors. Even so from the onset, Quixote’s vivid imaginations result in him being delusional, the consequence of which sees him – an ordinary man – become a knight-errant and employing a company for his sallies, and then goes on a trip to try and rid the world of evil spirit and save the poor and helpless.

Leadership and Commitment

Cervantes tries to show the reader that despite ‘ Don Quixote’s ‘ folly and madness, he still has the stuff of a great leader, and this is seen in his ability to be courageous and see beyond what the ordinary person would see. Quixote, in some way, is able to replicate a similar kind of vision and commitment that great leaders, such as Jesus Christ of Nazareth or Joan of Arc, had during their time.

To society, this kind of vision is characteristically unconventional, antisocial, and outlandish, but ‘ Don Quixote ‘ does not care or does he second guess his goals, and he goes on to carry them out even though he gets a backlash and beaten up for doing what he believes in.

The themes explained above are found more than a few times throughout the book, but Cervantes pins a good number of other minor themes in the book, and some of them include; love and romance, royalty and conquest, reality vs fantasy, among others.

Analysis of Key Moments in ‘ Don Quixote ‘

• Alonso Quixano finds himself getting addicted to reading books of chivalric exploits, and soon he starts to think that he too came become like one of the knightly heroes he reads in the book. He would sell some of his personal belongings to afford these books.
• He decides to become a knight-errant and elected a team for his sally. He changes his name to ‘ Don Quixote ‘, picks a horse, and appoints Sancho Panza as his squire, a peasant girl he calls Dulcinea as his lady.
• Clouded with rusty armor, ‘ Don Quixote ‘ begins his journey along with his team as they set out to reinstall the practice valor and chivalry. Quixote is determined to save the helpless and rid the world of all evil enchanters.
• His friends and family in the village are worried the books he read may have cost him his sanity and they try to bring him back by sending a priest and a young man called Sampson Carrasco.
• Quixote was heavily beaten by a group of traders after he contributed to them for insulting and making a mockery of lady Dulcinea, his love. He is transported back to the village to heal and recover.
• He continues on his journey into a territory ruled by the dubious Duke and Duchess who are bent on exploiting him and his squire.
• The priest finds Quixote doing penance by Sierra Morena. Dorothea, a mountain woman troubled by love, begs Quixote to help her reclaim her lost kingdom.
• Quixote resumes his quest, determined with a new objective only to be obstructed by a fight with Sampson Carrasco – who is disguised as a knight of the white moon. Carrasco defeats Quixote and according to the terms, the loser must forfeit his mission.
• Quixote is put in a cage and is shipped back to the village because of his defeat to Carrasco. As they travel, he loses hope on his trips and becomes sad and despondent.
• On getting home, Quixote is sick and falls into a deep sleep. When he awakes, he comes back to his senses, denounces his knight-errantry, and reclaims his birth name Alonso Quixano the good. He dies afterward.

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

‘ Don Quixote ‘ is one book that is prized for its ability to switch between historical, medieval, and modern styles of narration. Cervantes gives the book this ability when he incorporates a popular collection of old tales such as those found in Boccacio’s Decameron.

Although the adventures of ‘ Don Quixote ‘ revolve around the genre of chivalry, other styles such as myths, ancient ballads, and legends are included to make it more hybridized and innovative.

Another notable twist in literary styling that makes ‘ Don Quixote ‘ a special read is that its characters, whether minor or major, have independent purposes in their own stories outside of Quixote’s adventures, and are only just crossing paths or making a cameo in this book. For example, the forest-dwelling woman, Dorothea, maybe a minor character here but has her own independent tale on love trouble with Don Fernando.

In terms of tone used, Cervantes mostly opts for an admixture of satire and sobriety. The former is back by the reality of a lanky old man, ‘ Don Quixote ‘, becoming an actual knight who is on a mission to save the world. The latter hinges on the fact that Cervantes’ real motive for the book is to pass a strong message that one can also strive, against all odds, to be themselves and pursue their dreams.

Figurative Language

For the language, Cervantes made sure to be as formal as possible in other to cement the notion of being serious in all his satirical expressions. Personification appears to be the widely used figure of speech favored in the book, such as where Quixote battles windmills which he mistakes for living giants as seen in his expression below:

Those are giants that you see over there…. with long arms; there are giants with arms almost six miles long.

Aside from personification, there is also a substantial use of allusions, metaphors, and imageries among others.

Analysis of Symbol in ‘ Don Quixote’

There are several instances where ‘ Don Quixote ‘ is being accused of insanity, but the real proof of his unstable mental state is seen in his encounter with the windmills. These objects, which ‘ Don Quixote ‘ describes as giants with long arms, are the true depiction of Quixote’s circle of madness.

Quixote is so obsessed with books of chivalric romances to the extent that he would sell off his personal belongings just to afford more of them. It is clear that he was as normal as anyone in his past years prior to getting exposed to the books, but the moment he started feeding himself the stories and ideas therein, his disillusionment sets in.

There are a lot of references to popular books and manuscripts throughout the storyline, and this goes to show how important literature is giving us the ability to think deeply, visualize, and imagine things. It also works to shape our ideas and worldview.

Helmets, to ‘ Don Quixote ‘, can be taken to symbolize determination and perseverance to a cause. We see at least two kinds of helmets worn by ‘ Don Quixote ‘. The first is the absurd-looking one made with cardboard material, and the second is made of steel bowel.

This may look like a folly of a mentally unstable man even in the eyes of his squire, Sancho, but to Quixote, these helmets show his total dedication and unwavering disposition to his goals. This is why when Sancho tells him to put them away because they look ridiculous, he simply refuses.

Inns and Horses

In the era in which the book was written, inns were popular as they served as the meeting point between all classes of people in society. Inns represent the mixed atmosphere of the real society where a lot of socializing happens between the rich and the poor, royal and ordinary.

Quixote is very reluctant to spend time in inns and only does so when he absolutely has to, but on the other hand, his squire Sancho loves living and enjoying his life under the comfort of an inn. Quixote isn’t keen on inns because he is antisocial and only has his mind fixed on his mission.

Rocinante and Dapple being the two horses Quixote and Sancho rode through their sallies show their mission is a noble one filled with adventures, pilgrims, and excursions. It shows the value of their mission and beyond the horses’ purpose of transportation, they also served as good company for the travelers.

What is a predominant theme in ‘ Don Quixote ‘?

Self-belief is easily the most pronounced theme in the whole of ‘Don Quixote’ . However, other themes such as insanity, literature, and human culture are applicable.

Does ‘ Don Quixote ‘ have a moral lesson?

Yes, ‘ Don Quixote ‘ does have a moral lesson and it is the fact that it encourages the reader to go the extraordinary mile, putting behind the negative opinions and discouragement of people around you.

How much of a good read is ‘ Don Quixote’ ?

For a book that is widely regarded as the first modern novel, ‘ Don Quixote ‘ is understandably worthwhile for readers and this isn’t just for hype sake, but for the reason of it offering a wide range of entertaining and scintillating plots to the readership.

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About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

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Don Quixote

Miguel de cervantes, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Go back to the Cervantes page for more texts and other resources.

Don Quixote -- Genre Essay

<I>Don Quixote</I>, one of the first novels ever written, was instrumental in the development of the modern novel.

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha is one of the first novels ever composed, written in 1604 by Miguel de Cervantes, a noted Spanish author. Don Quixote is a satirical picaresque romance that was written in response to the many exaggerated chivalric romances of Cervantes? time. It contains many insights into the human psyche, and the collective consciousness? reasonings. I feel that the main meaning in Don Quixote is society?s failure to accept a deviation from the norm. There are many reasons for my opinion on this, as shall be outlined below. A romance is ?a fictional story in verse and prose that relates improbable adventures of idealized characters in some remote or enchanted setting?. This description of Romantic form fits Don Quixote like a glove. Peppered with verse every few chapters and telling the story of a Spanish nobleman (Don Quixote de la Mancha) who, because of reading too many tales of chivalry, comes to think that he is a knight who must combat the world's injustices. His imagination usually runs away with him, and he thinks that windmills are giants, flocks of sheep are enemy armies and roadside inns are castles. Don Quixote is Cervantes? brilliant representation of whimsy and a free and open imagination, constantly at odds with the logic and cruelty of the real world. As a stereotype with such fancies and eccentricities, Don Quixote stands for the values of living free in your own fantasy world, and yet he is still such a well-rounded and individual character. The reader often sees into the psyche of the Don, and is often positioned to collude with Don Quixote?s ideals and values, making them their own. Sancho Panza (Don Quixote?s squire) is the balance to Don Quixote in the story. He is the complete opposite of the Don, always prepared to sit down and think things out, and run away from a situation if necessary. His balancing force on Don Quixote (and the Don on him) saves them both from dangerous situations, and is an excellent depiction of the Yin/Yang relationship. The fact that Don Quixote is a picaresque romance automatically determines the setting. With a picaresque story (originating in Spain in the 16th century and coming from the Spanish picaro, meaning rogue), the term lends itself to a plot where the bulk of the action takes place on the road, and on a journey, and in which eccentric and low-life characters appear. Picaresque stories (especially romances) such as Don Quixote allow a statement of man?s freedom and independence, but the picaro of the story often invokes a counter-balancing, restraining oppression of free society, as shown in Don Quixote. Cervantes has done well to show such values in such a short book as Don Quixote, satirizing the society in which he lived in early 17th century Spain. The setting of the road allows Cervantes to take Don Quixote out to places where he can experience remote and dangerous adventures? although he never actually does. Cervantes holds a third person point of view for much of the book, breaking in occasionally into second person as the ?translator? of the story (from Moorish to Spanish) to inform the reader of certain things of which they should be aware. This combination of complete omniscience partnered with a translator popping in every so often creates a sense that the story really is absolutely true, and there really was an eccentric gentleman called Don Quixote running around Spain at the end of the 16th century. The reader is convinced by the irrepressible high spirit of the ?narrator? and the God-like perspective on the scene that the story is true, and therefore that the meanings and values of the story are true as well, because all angles of the story are given. The fact that various idioms and colloquialisms are inserted into the many conversations in the book but serve only to enhance the believability, and the chronological order of the chapters adds the icing to the already realistic cake. Don Quixote is a romance, meaning it ?relates improbable adventures of idealized characters?. It sets improbable and idealized characters against the odds, making them battle the corruption and baseness of the world and the elements. The elements also play a key part in defining the genre and the meaning. Don Quixote is a picaresque romance, implying that it is set outdoors on the open road, once again making the characters (roguish picaros) battle the elements and the cruelty of the real world to survive. It challenges society?s failure to accept a deviation from the norm by having a character that invokes an animosity to society in the readers. The fact that Don Quixote is a satirical picaresque romance adds to the meaning. All satires go to extremes to challenge the dominant cultural identity of the time, and Don Quixote is no exception, as it challenges society?s failure to accept a deviation from the norm. Finally, the complete omniscience coupled with varying degrees of 2nd person view adds realism. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha is a novel that challenges society?s failure to accept a deviation from the norm, using a satirical picaresque romantic genre. People should always hold this meaning, as if we do not accept a deviation then we will never approve of anything. Don Quixote challenges failure to accept a deviation from the norm.