The Parody of Don Quixote’s Chivalry
Topic B: How Accurate as a summary of Cervantes’s novel do you find the quotation below?
‘’The death of Don Quixote felt like the extinction in all of us of a special kind of beautiful foolishness, an innocent grandeur, a thing for which the world had no place, but which one might call humanity. The marginal man, the man laughably out of touch and doggedly out of step and also unarguably out of his mind, revealed in his last moment as the one to care most about and mourn most deeply for.’’
Chivalry is a defence of love, and an extension of insanity as the fictional tale of Don Quixote proves. Written by Miguel de Cervantes and considered an advent in novels of its kind, it has been reenacted in others like Quichotte by Salman Rushdie. Rushdie makes no effort to hide the similarity of his protagonist Ismail otherwise known by the pen name ‘’Quichotte’’ to Cervantes’ Don Quixote. He gives due credence to the original knight of all things romantic by several references in his book, the man who at his verge of insanity was genuinely sane. The readers are exposed to his last-minute decision to change the world for the better. How he achieves these acts is by rescuing the wily Dulcinea with the accompaniment of his faithful companion, Sancho. In the duration of his life, Don Quixote saves himself even though most critics would think otherwise. After all, what better service is there than to find yourself in the acts of incredible foolishness?
Chivalry toes the line between recklessness and cowardice, according to Cervantes. For Don, he lives the last moments of his life defending these blurry edges which he makes of his free will. Unlike many other novels of this kind, there is a dramatic complex. He is neither awarded the damsel for his efforts nor are there grandiose slashing of beasts with his sword. He dies with Sancho weeping by his side because of a broken heart, brokenness caused by the subduing of his knight dreams. The enchantment of being the person to bring to fruition every fragile hope was Don Quixote’s purpose. And as fascination goes, it only lasts as much as a mirage in the sun does. Most of the readers of this novel, lovers and critics alike, find themselves in situations where they act as a ‘saviour’. As it turns out, not all victims need saving, but some act pretends to do so and put on deceptive charms of vulnerability like Dulcinea. The reason this essay mentions Dulcinea is not so much as a failed romance, but the beginning of the undoing of the heroic dreams of Don Quixote. He embarked on his several missions, whether actual or imagined, to grasp the little god-complex aura he had before the end of his life. A life like that is sometimes unattainable. It is lived without a worry for the future is an aspiration many seem to have in mourning the loss of Don Quixote.
In the book, there is a particular quote which when rephrased goes something like, the simplicity of the heart makes for a good man. This quote is valid about the grand acts of the knight in question. There are instances where his pure heart leads him astray like when he mistook the windmills for giants and got whirled around for his troubles. But the genuine desire to help a lady get back her cherished jewellery from a team of bandits is well, commendable. Even after capture and before his planned execution, the leader of the bandits sees through him and lets him go, no hair harmed. He makes sense in his speech even though his actions may make one think otherwise. It is easier for anybody to see the reckless actions of Don Quixote make him attain valour if in nobody’s eyes but his own. The mirror knight as he is referred to lives life one musing after the other. In so doing, he entertains those people who chance upon his cowardly courage, and when his end comes, he makes all saddened.
His choice to leave his knighthood for a shepherd’s rod is met with dismay from his compatriots. It may be so because the exchange of fantasy for a more definable shepherd’s life loses a dream for them as well. The liberation of the old knight gives hope, and his final disillusionment for lost dreams kills him slowly. His devotion to the riot act of chivalry served him dying by himself, bothering nobody but Sancho. This sad end in comparison to the colourful exploits lived by Don Quixote are as disturbing as they are parody. Reading books that coloured his imagination to the point where he dreams of living a life like its characters were Don Quixote’s fault. Towards the end of his life, his decision to embrace a new chapter was uncanny and inspiring—the villagers who knew his life before he took up a new mission criticized in the beginning. With time, they came to admire his tenacity. They even mourned his return to the colourless life of a shepherd, more so his death.
When his wits were gone beyond repair, he came to conceive the strangest idea which appeared to him so fitting and necessary, goes a paraphrased line in the book. When a person approaches a significant age, one of the many resolves taken is to slow things down. Don Quixote took the exact opposite of this advice and chose to run with his dream. In testing a broken helmet, he shows the gathering of his senses as a sane man. He refrains against further examination to avoid its splintering. Taking this example would be one of the perfect ways to live a full life, much like the Don’s. Life is for living, despite what people think.
If a person has a dream, you should pursue it at once and not spend time thinking of the ‘what-if’. An epitome of Sancho will always be present to take care of the little details along the way. Chivalry was a decision made by Don Quixote, and it broke him in the same capacity it built him. The readers of this book can only hope to live such magnificence whether or not accolades come along with it.