Analysis of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

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Analysis of Don Quixote
Don Quixote is set in the seventeenth century in La Mancha in Spain whereby Alonso Quixote seeks to achieve chivalry after reading numerous books on this topic. Through adventure across the country; he subsequently adopts and uses the name Don Quixote de La Mancha. Quixote decides to ride an old horse across the country regardless of warnings from his niece and housekeeper. In his bid to achieve chivalry and knighthood Quixote is accompanied by Sancho who supports him in his quest even though Sancho doubts whether Quixote’s quest is achievable. In addition, he gives food and shelter to a lady by the name of Dulcinea del Toboso. Throughout his journey, Quixote is unable to differentiate facts from fiction with regards to his readings on chivalry, at the end he dies, and the relevance of chivalry diminishes.
Don Quixote’s goal of achieving chivalry is evident throughout his journeys the novel’s plot. However, he slowly begins to change his perceptions by distinguishing reality from fiction. At the beginning of the novel, he is an idealistic individual with a warped sense of the world brought about by reading numerous books. Firstly, his visions show that the inns he sees are real and not the castles he imagined they were.
“The landlord alone insisted upon it that they must punish the insolence of this madman, who at every turn raised a disturbance in the inn; but at length the uproar was stilled for the present; the pack-saddle remained a caparison till the day of judgment, and the basin a helmet and the inn a castle in Don Quixote’s imagination.”(Cervantes 355). Resistant to change is so strong that when confronted with reality Quixote says that mystic forces were manipulating the reality. Nonetheless, he changes his views on chivalry throughout his second journey where he steals from the population including a barber’s shaving machine which he views as Mambrino helmet which is thought to have healing powers. His visions about the shaving machine, inns and windmills are metaphors alluding to the fact that he is mad. Cervantes uses symbolism in naming the characters, Quixote acquires the title Don just like the nobility.
Sancho Panza, Quixote’s friend and squire changes from being a realist and embraces aspects of idealism through his interaction with Quixote. Initially, he was simply a peasant living in a farm, this changes after agreeing to follow Quixote in his adventures. He is no longer an ordinary farmer but a man who begins to imitate and pick up Quixote’s ideals of chivalry. At the end of the story, Sancho becomes more of an idealist and also a leader in his own right as shown in the following passage. “Ah!” said Sancho weeping, “don’t die, master, but take my advice and live many years; for the most foolish thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die without rhyme or reason, without anybody killing him, or any hands but melancholy’s making an end of him. Come, don’t be lazy, but get up from your bed and let us take to the fields in shepherd’s trim as we agreed.” (Cervantes 781). His change in perceptions leads Quixote more astray as he now begins to think than the illusions are true.
The role of culture is evident in the relationship between Quixote and Panza; we get to learn about the role of squires through Panza. Panza follows Quixote and not the other way around whereby he is of a lower social c...