Don Quixote and themes of idealism versus reality

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 no longer effective in today's world.

Throughout it all, Don Quixote is trying to live a dream he has of a so-called better time, when Spain was filled with lords, ladies and courtly manners. The bad guys were evil and the good guys were heroes, winning every time. But by the end of the book Don Quixote wakes up from this dream, which wasn't so wonderful after all, and realize things aren't just black and white, that his lady and trusty partner are human after all. Actually, Sancho Panza becomes a better man from the experience, but it seems like Don Quixote turns back into a sad old man.

Cervantes is very sympathetic with Don Quixote in the estimation of this writer. Cervantes is just trying to show that in the world of today (or of his day), old traditions, ethics and motivations just don't work any more, if they ever did. When an old person tells a young one that things aren't as good as they were "in the good old days," there is a faulty memory saying that - a memory that filters out the bad that went along with the good that existed then. Things weren't actually better, but were just different, with different kinds of standards, different concepts of what makes up right and wrong, different codes of behavior. Humans remain the same throughout the ages, with the same impulses and instincts, as well as giving-in to temptations to do bad things and responding to other humans who are in trouble (Phillips 2007).

Don Quixote is also about class and worth, which we think we do not deal with very much today. However, wealth and power are still important and this novel helps us realize that these things are still being dealt with. Just because someone is rich we often revere them, without considering how they came to be rich. Therefore, wealth is honored. So is power. A powerful person is honored and catered to without considering whether his or her motives are good or evil. Don Quixote faced the same forces and, taking on the guise of a power for good, fought on what he thought were equal terms with the evils of the world he lived in within his mind.