Term Paper on "Don Quixote Is About a Man Living"

Term Paper 3 pages (1215 words) Sources: 2

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Don Quixote is about a man living in the 16th century in the countryside in Spain named Alonso Quijano. He loves reading about knights and chivalry, admiring the famous heroes of the past. He reads so much that he comes to believe he lives in the past and longs to "become a knight errant and... seek adventures... righting all manner of wrongs and... placing himself in danger and ending those wrongs, winning eternal renown and everlasting fame" (Grossman 21). He renames himself Don Quixote, as he comes to think of himself as a real knight in shining armor and remakes a headpiece from his ancestral heritage to wear. He is knighted by the innkeeper and travels around on Rocinante, his old horse, supposedly doing good deeds, such as rescuing a boy tied to a tree, seeking adventure and living for knightly honor. He has a sidekick named Sancho Panza and loves a "lady," who really a peasant woman named Aldonza Lorenzo, who lives near him who he has renamed Dulcinea del Toboso and writes love poems to her. He has really gone crazy. All this happens in Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

By Chapter 5, Don Quixote has had a bad fall and has been attacked by neighbors. In Chapter 6, Quixote's niece and housekeeper come in his room while he is asleep and try to burn the books on chivalry, which they generally agree, and his priest and barber also say, are the cause of his going crazy. In Chapter 7, his friends, who are going through his books, have to restrain Quixote, who has awakened. After another disastrous adventure, they feed him and make him go back to bed.

By the end of Chapter 8 Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have again gone out on their knight errant mission and come upon what Don Quixote thinks are forty giants, but which are really windmills. He charges one of them and the windmill blades knock him down, break his lance and injure him and his horse. He blames a magician for his bad luck, just as he did before when he had bad luck (Grossman 57).

The novel has been called a farce, a fantasy, a parable and a fable. It may be all of these, as Cervantes did not have just one reason for writing it. The story, as all good stories must be, may be understood on many levels. As a farce, it is humorous and enjoyable, even to those who do not know about Spain, its history, religion or politics. As a fantasy, it explores the dreams of an old Spaniard and in so doing, creates the world in which a Spanish knight might live in his mind, reliving the good old days that never were, when men were noble and fought off giants, dragons and evil spirits, rescuing fair ladies, supported by trusted and loving servants. As a parable, it outlines how western man tilts at windmills, over-reacting to imagined evils which might knock him silly and scared, but are in effect, only figments of their imagination and harmless machinations on the landscape of present day culture. Dulcinea, an illusion, is not the perfect woman, nor Sancho Panza the perfect worker, but in Don Quixote's mind, they are. Together they "conspire" to defeat him. This is the parable of industrialization, progress, the laboring class and the real nature of those who used to be lower class or underprivileged (such as labor workers and women). As a fable, it tells us that it is useless to ride our high horse out to fight imaginary or even real enemies, as the old ways are… READ MORE

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