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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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Review: The Art of Cervantes in Don Quixote: Critical Essays

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The Art of Cervantes in Don Quixote: Critical Essays (Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures) Hardcover – September 23, 2019

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Four centuries after his death in 1616, Cervantes's great novel ( the first novel), Don Quixote (1605; 1615), continues to fascinate readers and generate debate about key questions. Were the efforts of the deluded hidalgo and his corpulent squire to revive the lost age of chivalry intended simply to amuse? Or to be the vehicle for a sustained reflection on the acts of writing and reading, the state of Spanish society, the nature of reality itself? And if so, from what political and ideological perspectives? Should Don Quixote , a multi-generic text par excellence, be understood not simply as a novel, but as a poem and a performance? Cervantes is acknowledged as a supremely innovative stylist, but what was the nature and extent of his debt to classical and Renaissance rhetoric?

These major areas of critical enquiry are addressed by ten leading scholars based in British and Irish universities. Each essay focuses on a particular aspect of the novel, and examines in its light particular chapters, scenes, motifs or techniques, while at the same time offering a comprehensive reading of the text. Taken as a whole, the ideas and approaches presented in this volume contribute to an understanding of Cervantes's art in Don Quixote that balances detail with synthesis.

• Print length 302 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Legenda
• Publication date September 23, 2019
• Dimensions 6.69 x 0.69 x 9.61 inches
• ISBN-10 1781885052
• ISBN-13 978-1781885055
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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Legenda (September 23, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 302 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1781885052
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1781885055
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.69 x 0.69 x 9.61 inches

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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.

About the Book

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.

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.

Cite This Page

Onuorah, Victor " Don Quixote Themes and Analysis 📖 " Book Analysis , https://bookanalysis.com/miguel-de-cervantes/don-quixote/themes-analysis/ . Accessed 11 April 2024.

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Why we read ‘don quixote’, arts & culture.

The art and life of Mark di Suvero

What does it mean to be “quixotic” today? Are street-corner preachers quixotic? Is Bono? What about film directors who dementedly pursue the unlikely grail of adapting a difficult book for the screen? The word endures because its source endures. Don Quixote de la Mancha is the first modern novel, and two weeks ago I found myself on the Upper East Side, at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, tracing the word part of the way toward its origin. In the inevitable absence of Miguel de Cervantes, it was left to the book’s most recent English translator, Edith Grossman, the publisher, Andrew Hoyem, and the artist, William T. Wiley to explain the book’s riverine significance. The Quixote Delta has proved fertile ground for world literature, branching off into numerous tributaries, irrigating any number of national traditions and, finally, trickling down into the work of some of the most singular figures in world literature, from Nabokov to Borges, Fielding to Garcia Marquez.

But doesn’t quixotic threaten to swamp Quixote ? Aren’t these words, which get coined in tribute to an author or a book, almost always treacherous? Can all the possibilities and implications of a character, or even—more ambitiously—a life’s work, be contained within the semantic boundaries of just one word? We think of Orwellian as adjectival shorthand for a state apparatus of terror and surveillance, but what if we also took it to mean window-pane clarity of expression or even a marked aversion to the poetry of Stephen Spender? In the same way, Don Quixote is not only a cautionary tale about the perils of idealism: among other things, it is also the first great book about books, a visionary parable about the responsibilities of reading and writing fiction that arrived early on in the age of printing. The river feeds into an ocean.

Illustration by William T. Wiley.

Fittingly then, the Spanish Institute has created an exhibit for the Arion Press edition of Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote, which was illustrated by Wiley. Punctuated by exclamations of warm applause, Hoyem, the founder and director of Arion Press, presented us with an account of the press’s establishment in 1974, its commitment to printing as a craft, and the surely unparalleled achievements of publishing illustrated editions of Moby-Dick , Ulysses , and even the Bible.

As Hoyem spoke, Grossman and Wiley sat enthroned on two sumptuously upholstered chairs, as though they might have been waiting for Velázquez to make their portraits. They would have formed an interestingly contrasting pair of character studies: while Grossman was very elegantly attired in a trouser suit and silk scarf, Wiley loomed darkly in a broad-brimmed hat and bolo. Having translated not just Cervantes, but numerous novels by Marquez, Vargas Llosa, and Ariel Dorfman (not to mention “a short erotic novella,” whose author went by sadly unnamed, in between books 1 and 2 of Don Quixote ), Grossman was well equipped to explain why Don Quixote was still being read. Afterward, at the reception, she told me that “you cannot write in Spanish without having Cervantes in mind … there is no question, in my mind, that you couldn’t have Marquez, for example, without him. They are all heirs of that style.” I shared with her my enthusiasm for one of the book’s early translators, the evergreen churl Tobias Smollett, author of Roderick Random and Humphrey Clinker , and she agreed that “Cervantes’s influence blossomed in England … it comes by way of the eighteenth-century novelists like Fielding and Sterne.”

If Grossman made a case for the cultural permanence of Don Quixote , Wiley argued for the book’s contemporary relevance. I asked him what appealed to him about the book, and he spoke, with gentle conviction, about “the idealism and the chivalry we’ve been lacking. Don Quixote reminded me of early cowboy films like The Cisco Kid . There was the idealist, who almost always had a buffoonish sidekick, and they balanced each other in an interesting way. They never killed anyone; they just shot the gun out of their opponent’s hand.” Did he think that the book told us something about our own times? “If Quixote were here, he’d be busy—he’d be over in Madison, Wisconsin.” Later on, Wiley would create a polite ripple of shock among the audience by nominating Bradley Manning as a successor to the Quixotic spirit.

But as well as celebrating the daring moral venture of Don Quixote , this was an occasion for confirmed bibliophiles. Four hundred years after Cervantes’s masterpiece emerged, we now stand on the farthest shore of the printing age. We still buy books; we still want them hanging round, causing clutter or mess. Or at any rate, I do. For me, as for Anthony Powell, books furnish a room. I can’t imagine a bare, shelfless wall, not even in a kitchen, and I usually keep enough spare copies of the London Review of Books in my bathroom to practically paper over the tiles. Whenever I visit someone at home, my first trespass is always to inspect—closely—their personal library. Whoever proudly displays an Arion Press edition of Don Quixote in their abode will not just be the person most likely to be picking up the check after dinner, but someone incurably in love with the book as artifact and objet .

This passion is significant now because we have some idea of how a world without books might work. We at least know that we would continue to read. This blog alone suggests as much. As do the sleek, gray tablets you see every morning on the subway. But I intend no jeremiad against technology. If anything, I would rather have it both ways: the book and the blog; the lavish endeavor of the lovingly prepared new edition and the take-out convenience of the virtual text. Of course, having it both ways is very far from being quixotic. I’ll leave that to Wiley.

The exhibition featuring Arion Press’s edition of Don Quixote is on display at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute through April 20.

• Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

• Literature Notes
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Part 1: The Author's Preface
• Part 1: Chapter I
• Part 1: Chapter II
• Part 1: Chapter III-IV
• Part 1: Chapter V-VI
• Part 1: Chapter VII
• Part 1: Chapter VIII
• Part 1: Chapter IX
• Part 1: Chapter X-XIII
• Part 1: Chapter XIV
• Part 1: Chapter XV-XVIII
• Part 1: Chapter XIX
• Part 1: Chapter XX
• Part 1: Chapter XXI-XXIV
• Part 1: Chapter XXV
• Part 1: Chapter XXVI-XXIX
• Part 1: Chapter XXX
• Part 1: Chapter XXXI-XXXII
• Part 1: Chapter XXXIII-XXXIV
• Part 1: Chapter XXXV
• Part 1: Chapter XXXVI-XL
• Part 1: Chapter XLI
• Part 1: Chapter XLII-XLIV
• Part 1: Chapter XLV
• Part 1: Chapter XLVI-LI
• Part 1: Chapter LII
• Part 2: The Author's Preface
• Part 2: Chapter I
• Part 2: Chapter II-IV
• Part 2: Chapter V
• Part 2: Chapter VI
• Part 2: Chapter VII-VIII
• Part 2: Chapter IX-X
• Part 2: Chapter XI
• Part 2: Chapter XII-XIV
• Part 2: Chapter XV
• Part 2: Chapter XVI-XVII
• Part 2: Chapter XVIII-XXII
• Part 2: Chapter XXIII
• Part 2: Chapter XXIV-XXV
• Part 2: Chapter XXVI
• Part 2: Chapter XXVII-XXXIV
• Part 2: Chapter XXXV
• Part 2: Chapter XXXVI-XL
• Part 2: Chapter XLI
• Part 2: Chapter XLII-LI
• Part 2: Chapter LII
• Part 2: Chapter LIII-LIV
• Part 2: Chapter LV
• Part 2: Chapter LVI-LVII
• Part 2: Chapter LVIII
• Part 2: Chapter LIX-LX
• Part 2: Chapter LXI-LXII
• Part 2: Chapter LXIII-LXIV
• Part 2: Chapter LXV-LXXII
• Part 2: Chapter LXXIII
• Part 2: Chapter LXXIV
• Miguel de Cervantes Biography
• Critical Essays
• Purpose of Don Quixote
• Technique and Style in Don Quixote
• Characterization in Don Quixote
• Themes in Don Quixote
• Essay Topics and Review Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Alonso Quixano, a less-than-affluent man of fifty, "lean bodied" and "thin faced, lives modestly in the Spanish country village of La Mancha with his niece, Antonia, and a cranky housemaid. Practical in most things, compassionate to his social peers, the local clergy, and the servant classes, Quixano is respectful toward the ruling classes, whom he unquestioningly accepts as his superiors. He is driven neither by ambition for wealth and position nor bitterness at his genteel poverty.

Well read and thoughtful, Quixano's most prized possessions are his books. From his readings and studies, he becomes by degrees interested, then obsessed, with the codes, deeds, and tales of chivalry — of knights errant on some courtly and idealized mission. As his appetite for the lore of chivalry increases, Quixano begins selling off acres of his farmlands, using the funds to buy more books, and increasingly throwing himself into his studies. "From little sleep and too much reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits. He had a fancy . . . to turn his passion knight errant and travel through the world with horse and armor in search of adventures" with the purpose of "redressing all manner of wrongs."

At length, he is galvanized into action by his passion for the chivalric code. Outfitting himself with some old rusty armor, Quixano enlists his spavined hack horse to go forth in search of knightly adventures. Hopeful of finding a proper noble to dub him, Quixano finally is licensed in his venture by an innkeeper who believes him to be a lord of a manor. Now Quixano is "Don Quixote de La Mancha"; the tired hack and dray horse becomes elevated to "Rosinante."

All the new knight needs now in order to venture forth is a lady to whose service he is sworn and a servant or page. For the former, he chooses Dulcinea del Tobosa, named after Aldonza Lorenzo, a farm girl whom he had been taken with at one time.

After three days on the road, Quixote encounters a group of traveling salesmen whom he attacks after they refuse to acknowledge Dulcinea's great beauty. He is badly beaten by the servant of the salesman and forced to accept the help of a neighbor, who brings him home on the back of a donkey.

While he is recovering, Quixote is forced to watch as his housekeeper, a barber, and a priest burn all his books on chivalry in an attempt to persuade him to give up his improbable quest. But this only fuels Quixote's determination. He persuades Sancho Panza, a plump, simple-minded-but-opportunistic laborer, to serve as his page, by playing on his ambitions. Don Quixote promises Sancho his own island to govern, for surely such a splendid knight as he is sure to become will soon take many spoils.

And so this pair set forth, Quixote on his spavined old horse, Panza mounted on Dapple, his mule. Their second adventure lasts for three weeks and is comprised of a series of events that comprise the balance of Book One. Among other things, Quixote battles windmills, thinking them to be giants. At an inn, which he mistakes for a castle, Quixote is visited in bed by a maid, who causes a great uproar when she discovers she has come to the wrong room. Refusing to pay the bill and accusing the innkeeper of being inhospitable, Quixote is rousted, only to fall promptly into another misadventure with a religious procession, and yet other ironic and error-prone encounters with locals.

Interspersed among these adventures are a series of stories and moral tales, illustrating the pastoral storytelling tradition in Spain. As well, there are two long, learned disquisitions, delivered by Quixote. The first is a description of the Golden Age of mythology, told during a supper shared with some unlettered goatherds who don't understand a word he says. Later on, Quixote addresses a company during dinner at an inn in a debate about whether the career of arms is superior to that of letters, or vice versa.

Throughout the adventures it becomes clear that Quixote, for all his seeming madness, is a mild-mannered, empathetic man, genuine in his concern for chivalric ideals. Although he has agendas of his own, Sancho Panza has come to believe in and show loyalty to his new master. But in spite of all his good intentions, Quixote's quest leads him to be returned home, imprisoned in a cage on an ox-cart by his village priest and barber for Don Quixote's own good.

Published in a separate volume, Book Two of Don Quixote's adventures contains a unique feature. Shortly after Book One was published and Cervantes was at work on Book Two, he got word of the appearance of a pirated Book Two in which the author, a writer named Avellaneda, presumed to write further adventures of the knight, going so far as to renounce his service to Dulcinea. Cervantes was at Chapter 59 in Book Two, having Quixote and Panza headed to a jousting tournament in Saragossa. Now, angered by the pirated version, Cervantes sets forth in revenge by having Quixote and Panza eating dinner at an inn and "overhearing" talk of the Avellaneda version. The knight and squire promptly set forth to Barcelona, home of Don Alvaro Tarfe, a character from the Avellaneda book. When they arrive in Barcelona, they kidnap the Avellaneda character.

Book Two also introduces the character of Samson Carrasco, a young man from Don Quixote's village. A recent graduate of Salamanca University, Carrasco takes on the earlier roles of the priest and the barber in attempting to rescue and keep Don Quixote away from danger, but Don Quixote is not interested in being "rescued." He is determined to go to Tobosa to pay his respects to Dulcinea. They encounter three peasant girls and by some deception, Sancho hopes that his master will accept one of these as being Dulcinea. When events or appearances run counter to his expectations, Don Quixote tends to believe that enchanters have worked their mischief. In this instance, he believes enchanters have made Dulcinea look like an ugly peasant girl.

Don Quixote unexpectedly wins a battle with a knight (The Knight of the Mirrors), who turns out to be none other than Samson Carrasco in disguise. Samson had hoped to get the Don back home to safety by disguising himself as a rival knight. The plan backfires. Shortly afterwards, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet the "Knight in the Green Topcoat," which includes the episode of the lion with whom the Don wants to do battle.

The major portion of this section is devoted to an unnamed duke and duchess who, with their retainers, play a series of pranks — in the form of burlesque pageants — on Quixote. They also cause injury to both the knight and his squire. Another vital element is the appointment of Sancho Panza as governor of an island — another elaborate prank that ends with Panza renouncing the life of a feudal governor and showing a deep layer of loyalty to Quixote.

Once again Samson Carranzo appears, this time at the beach in Barcelona where, in the guise of The Knight of the White Moon, he challenges Don Quixote to battle. Of course, Quixote accepts the challenge and, in the presence of the viceroy and a distinguished company, is roundly defeated. A condition of Quixote's defeat is that he abandon knight errantry for the rest of his life.

In the remaining chapters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza return to La Mancha, but not before they experience an additional stay with the Duke and Duchess and sundry other humiliating experiences suffered by the ex-knight.

When they arrive home, Don Quixote, apparently broken in spirit, is put to bed. After a long sleep, he declares his name to be Alonso Quixano once more and appears to have regained his reason. Shortly after he denounces chivalry and knighthood, he dies among the lamentation of friends.

Next Character List