Don Quixote

Don Quixote is a satire about a motivated ignoramus who thinks he’s acquired all there is to know about life by reading books. Specifically, Mr. Quixada has been inspired by books venerating the Christian Crusades. He is convinced the actions of the Christian military (the Knights) demonstrate all that is decent, true, right and good, and resolves to demonstrate moral excellence in his own life by unquestioningly and uncompromisingly following their example in every way.

Mr. Quixada retrieves his great-grandfather’s rusty armor and sword. The helmet he finds lacks the face-guard which is always associated with knights, so he crafts one out of papier mache and attaches it. He then swings his sword at it to test its strength and obliterates it. He fashions another one and decides it is superior to the first, although he refrains from testing it. This is our first glimpse of the major theme running throughout the book; Don Quixote lives primarily by faith, and not by works alone. He buys a horse, and, after agonizing for four days over what to name it, decides upon Rozinante; and liking that name so much, he decides to rename himself as well. After eight days of pondering, he settles upon Don Quixote de la Mancha. Finally, he decides he should have a lady for whom his services will be performed, and rather randomly chooses a prostitute from the next village he finds attractive named Aldonsa Lorenzo. They have never met and never do, but regardless he insists on changing her name, in his mind anyway, to Dulcinea del Toboso.

Don Quixote decides to follow the example of his heroes and the commandments of the Bible by traveling the world as a knight and impart upon it goodness, virtue, righteousness, etc. He quickly finds the real world wanting, however. He distresses over its mundanity, which he quickly solves by stubbornly insisting upon viewing his environment with the grandeur and idealism with which it is described in his precious books. It is important to recognize that through all of his subsequent travels, Don Quixote never roams more than a few days journey on horseback from his home, and much of that time is spent avoiding people. He refrains from engaging in the real world as much as possible.

When Don does meddle in the affairs of others, always in an attempt to prove his superior strength and moral code, the results are unwaveringly disastrous. One of the principle things Don Quixote has learned from his books is that evil often disguises itself as good, so he constantly chooses to see one as the other. Denouncing the inhumanity of keeping people in chains, he frees a convoy of criminals, who promptly beat him up, rob him and escape. Even when he prevents a master from beating a servant, it only results in the servant being beaten more after Don withdraws. I was impressed by the similarities of Don Quixote to George W. Bush.

Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s poor and greedy neighbor who accompanies Don in hopes of getting rich, believing Don’s promise that he will give him an island to rule over at the end of their adventure. Don enjoys the fact that Sansho is so much a coward that he views Don as brave and so much a moron that he deems Don wise. Don frequently shows off to impress Sancho in the same manner that I used to entertain my younger sister as a kid. (One of my favorite childhood games was the one in which I wrestled an invisible monster out from under the bed and through it down the stairs while my sister nervously clutched her blankets.)

Don Quixote is not as virtuous as he pretends to be. When the innkeeper’s daughter trips and falls into his bed, he mistakes this as an advance and justifies that having sex with her would be the right thing to do. This theme that morality is best kept by having no opportunity to be immoral resurfaces later in the form of a story read while Don sleeps. By the halfway point of this long ass novel, even the author has gotten bored with it and begins segueing into several alternate stories. There are literally hundreds of pages in which Don Quixote never appears. The novel is divided into four books, and the second half of book two and almost all of book four are superfluous. Apparently this book was written before the invention of editing. Cervantes overtly assumes his audience is as dense as his main character, and insists upon beating this horse long after it is, if not dead, really, really tired.

I personally think the book should have ended after book three, chapter XII, at the brilliantly ironic moment when Don Quixote, inspired by a man he stumbles across in the mountain who has been driven mad over the betrayal of the woman he has secretly eloped with and his best friend who get publicly married behind his back, decides he will pretend to go crazy. He cites several knights who were driven mad by unrequited love. He sends Sancho to retrieve Dulcinea and brag of Don’s insanity, so that when her arrival cures him she will be overcome with joy and they will be married. Don wants to do some crazy things, especially run around naked, so that Sansho can vividly describe his condition to Dulcinea; but Sansho hilariously insists that he’ll be able to come up with sufficiently convincing stories of Don’s lunacy. At this point, Sansho could have gone home, fucked the hooker and died of AIDS; the end. If you don’t like my ending, try reading the book all the way through; I dare you.