DON QUIXOTE Character of Don Quixote:-

DON QUIXOTE  Character of Don Quixote:-

v INTRODUCTION:-

          Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist and dramatist. He was an outstand ingenious and supreme innovator of Spanish literature. Along with being a playwright, poet novelist, he was also the inventor of the psychological short story in Spain. His influence, on the English novel was profound, especially of Fielding, Sterne and Smollett. From the long record of struggle and achievement in the face of consistently hostile circumstances he emerges as one of the noblest characters in his country’s story. Cervantes’s writing reveals his insights into the nature of reality and the meaning of life in general. Even his fame is as assured and universal as that of the hero of his great novel, ‘Don Quixote’. The popularity and the universality of the book can be assumed by reading the following words, 

“except for the bible, No book has been so

Widely diffused into Many different languages

 In addition to ‘Don Quixote’.”

          “Don Quixote” is one of the earliest novels in a modern European language and many people consider it the best book in Spanish. The imagination, satirical spirit, humanistic culture and many colored genius of Cervantes all met and found their highest expression in it. He gave to this work the form of a burlesque of the romances of chivalrie. But along with its parody, the work also becomes a criticism of life which Spaniards accept as permanent and universal. It has also the element of picaresque, heroic and romantic novel. 

v A tragicomic Hero:-

          Don Quixote is the novel’s tragicomic hero. His main quest in life is to revive knight-errantry in a world devoid of chivalric virtues and values. He believed only what he chooses to believe and sees the world very differently from most people. Honest, dignified, proud and idealistic, he wants to save the world. As intelligent as he is man, Don Quixote starts out as an absurd and isolated figure and he ends up a pitiable and lovable old man whose strength and wisdom have failed him.

v His Love for book of Chivalry:-

          Don Quixote is the story of Alonso Quijano. He is a gentle man who lives in a small village in the district of La Mancha in Spain. He is a very much fond of reading old chivalric romances about knights-errantry. He is addicted to books of chivalry. He spends every moment engrossed in thick and tortuous books with filled tales of knights and squires, magician and giants and beautiful ladies. At he began to sell parts of his estate in order to buy even more books. Devoting whole days to reading them, he allowed the estate to fall into neglect. Still he paid no notice and continued to immerse himself in his romantic story “Until finally from so little sleeping and so much reading his brain dried p and he went completely out of his mind.”

v His Idea of Becoming a Knight himself:-

           Don Quixote believed that the ancient chivalry should be restored. He resolves to become a knight-errant himself. He finds an old suit of armour, a rusty sword, and a barber’s basin to serve as a helmet. He sets out to seek adventures on his old horse called Roxinanate. Like typical knight-errant, he fall in love with a country girl whose he called Dulcinea del Toboso. For himself he picks the name of Don Quixote. Then he asks an innkeeper to dub him knight with all ceremonies. The innkeeper takes him as a harmless lunatic and does as he wishes. Then he engages a peasant name Sancho Panza to act as his squire.

v Quixote and his squire’s Adventures:-

          Their adventures are very farcical but the Don is able to revert the most ridiculous situation into a high romance. He comes to a row to wind-mill, mistakes them for giants, and attacks them with his lance. And he is thrown off his horse. Another time, he takes a herd of sheep for a great army, attacks it, and is heaving beaten by the Shepherds. Once the Don and his squire hears frightening sound from a building which they mistake as castle. Actually they have hard the sounds of the machinery of a mill. Then at an inn, he hits a row of wineskins and mistakes the wine as blood. 

v His third sally and His renunciation 

          Then the village barber and the curate bring the Don home to nurse him back to health. The Don restores his heath but not sanity. Once again he and Sancho set out on their adventure. They come to the castle of the Duke and the Duchess. The Duke fulfills the Don’s promise to Sancho by giving him an island to govern. Here Sancho discharges his duties conscientiously and wisely. The Don is finally brought to his senses by a young man of his village named Sanson Carrasco. Sanson disguised himself as a knight challenges the Don to combat on condition the defeated party should object the commands of the victor. Sanson wins and asks the Don to go home and not to take arms for a year. Then the Don falls ill, and to surprise of all, become suddenly quite sane. Sancho urges his master to continue the quest of Lady Dulcinea, but the Don now Alonzo Quijano again renounces all his fantasies makes his will, and in a sober Christian fashion breathes his last.

v His attitude towards Knighthood.      

          This novel shows the difference between reality and illusions, through the adventures of Don Quixote and his Squire, Sancho Panza. The later part of this novel deals with the problem of reality and illusion. How mad is Don Quixote? Sometimes we find him out of his normal sense. At other times he is quite reasonable enough on the matters which do not touch his obsession of Knighthood. In this connection Van Doren suggests that “He is acting a role and he knows exactly what he is doing just as the child who pays the role of Superman…is not deceived by his own game.”

          Moreover, such acting  is not completely fruitless because it creates thing it imitates. Suppose that a man who pretends to be a poet, actually write excellence poetry; he would no longer be pretending then. This is Don Quixote’s attitude towards Knighthood. In this novel, he tells that Chivalry has became rare in these days, but if only men will think, feel and act like Knights; they will be Knights in fact. Thus it becomes hard to say what is fantasy and what is reality.

v Death of Don Quixote: -

          Thus at the time of death, Don Quixote is free from all dreams like a child who puts away his toys at bedtime. He has realized that his day dreams are like toys. He does not want to keep the keep. He is completely disillusioned. The tables are now completed turned and we do not know who is the wise man and who is the fool.

v Don Quixote’s popularity and immortality

          Here lies the secret of Don Quixote’s popularity and immortality. The novel is not just a satire on the medieval romance on Chivalry. Its theme is permanent and universal. The knight at arms is permanent figure of the human imagination. Some he is called Hercules or Superman. Besides such heroic figures, the human imagination creates the anti-hero whose earth bound and practical personality is necessary to the other, and each is a  part of our own inner life. Here Don Quixote is the idealistic dreamer and He is the doer. While on the other hand, Sancho is the touchstone of reality. He is the taker. In this way Cervantes makes philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality and illusion through character Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

v Conclusion:-

          The character of the Don makes this novel the book of all times and of all ages. It is a book for youth, the age of senses and irresponsible laughter. It is book for middle age, the age of reason and discernment. It is a book for old age, the age of the spirit, of the quiet smile and the philosophic mind. Henry Morley remarks,

“Shakespeare himself is not more human than Cervantes.”

Sir Walter Raleigh observes

          “This is the wisest and most spending book in the worlds.”

Referring to the permanent appeal of the character of Don, W.B.Yeats says,

          “No playwright ever has made or ever will make a character that will follow us out of the theater as Don Quixote follows us out of the book.”