Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
Before reading this novel, I didn’t know the reason Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra wrote it and the point he was trying to make. For those of you in a similar boat - when Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, chivalry romances were very popular in Spain and monarchs feared these books would negatively influence young minds. Thus, this novel starts as we follow Don Quixote, an older gentleman who was read so many of these chivalry romances that he believes they are all true and he must follow in the footsteps of these knight-errants.
This book was so funny. Not only does Don Quixote believe he is a knight that must go on adventures to help the weak, poor and wronged; but his mental state is so altered that he imagines the magic and other fictional beings and situations in books as reality. Of course, he must also come across these fictional moments on his adventures even if they aren’t real. Inns become castles, shepherds become charging soldiers, servant girls or even prostitutes are princesses and of course, windmills are giants. This makes for many very entertaining altercations as well as many discussions between Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza of what is real or “enchanted”.
The second half of the book was written ten years after the first and our main characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza now have a book written about their adventures. In their newest adventures, they now meet people who have read the book and are aware of Don Quixote’s madness; things take a darker turn. Although there are still funny moments, this portion of the book had me feeling so upset and angry for Don Quixote and also strangely inspired. Don Quixote chose to bring the beauty of his beloved stories into his ugly reality. He is mad and unstable, but he is a dreamer and struggles to make as much as he can better. He sees a perfect horse in the lame Rosinante, gorgeous women in those deemed plain or ugly, and so his optimism spoke to me.
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams -this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness - and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
Towards the end of the book, I did feel as if some of the altercations were a bit repetitive. I was still entertained and laughed a few times, but as it’s a very long book it may not have needed quite that many scenes to get its point across and still be great. Overall, definitely one of the classics I’d recommend and wish it hadn’t taken me so long to finally read it myself.
I also listened to the audible version narrated by George Guidall which was pretty good in the different voices Guidall used, however there were a few moments where he was yelling a bit too much.
Synopsis: Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in all sorts of wonderful ways. While Quixote's fancy often leads him astray—he tilts at windmills, imagining them to be giants—Sancho acquires cunning and a certain sagacity. Sane madman and wise fool, they roam the world together, and together they have haunted readers' imaginations for nearly four hundred years.