A review by dyno8426
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

5.0

This thoroughly entertaining book deserves to be called one of the foremost modern classics. I loved reading it and it was not just to see how the adventures of our delusional Don Quixote fare him, or how his simple-minded squire, the memorable Sancho Panza keeps on stringing proverbs after proverbs whenever his master puts him in one shenanigan after another. The authors uses this satirical approach to challenge the ideal notions of chivalry, romance and adventure. Undoubtedly, the dreaminess and imaginative departure that the genre of such literature promises is exactly the butt of the joke that Don Quixote's life stands for. Through the high-mindedness of Quixote's delusion and extremes ranging to madness, the author unravels and showcases the vulnerability of human condition to the pursuit of lofty ideals and impractical dreams. One can see how behind Don Quixote's failures is his innocent, almost child-like imagination which makes him thick-skinned to the gawking reality that always challenges and eventually crushes him. Looking closely, the joke's not on Don Quixote; he's just a poster-child - instead it is on those characters and archetypal virtues that promise glory and are baited for pursuit in our humble lives. The rigidity of the path towards chasing ideals is sometimes represented as an asymptote of expectations, which becomes humorous and idiotic soon enough. We have frequently experienced in real life when we see anybody trying really hard to maintain a chastity of spirit in any field through blind belief. Blindness of this sort is usually pity-evoking and sometimes even frightening. In Don Quixote's case, we see the author ridiculing such proponents or champions of make-believe causes, trying to escape the mundaneness and insignificance of life through self-proclaimed titles and incredible audacity of character. Even more generically, it displays a pathetic, egotistical desire associated with human condition to feel important. Like our protagonist, this belief sometimes envisions itself as a knighthood of a noble causes which is entitled to us by some higher power and uplifting damsels from low living, considering the rest of the humanity as unworthy or ignorant in bearing the arms for such causes. Through the use of literature as a symbol, he brings the attention and judgement of readers in evaluating myths in general by the same standards of sanity. Humour is always accompanied by a painful realisation of something which hurts, and laughter is a release of the tension that this realisation causes us. Don Quixote is an embodiment of this desire to challenge reality with lofty ideals, and with such stubbornness and arrogance that despite repetitive limitations, sometimes we will never converge with the omnipresent reality. And if Don Quixote stands for castles in the air with all fluff and no substance, then Sancho Panza is the hard, uncompromising reality that is ever ready to welcome us when dreams come crashing to the ground. While Don Quixote is the epitome of self-delusion and hollow ambition, Sancho Panza is a contrast through grounded desires and a rebellion of ideals. His occasional cunning while sometimes impresses and sprinkles sanity to Don Quixote's perceptions, he himself is a slave to his own vices which further abandons of hope of any escape from our condition. Sancho Panza is unable to prevent himself from being dragged by his master's imagination and often fools his own judgement by becoming a victim of unrealistic hopes. At times, it becomes hard to distinguish the foolhardiness of the two. Even the author makes sure to strip away all the filters of chivalric honour and dignity from Quixote's continuous streak of misfortune and even from his indefatigable romantic spirit. His life becomes an icon in this world by having lived in a world of his own - an example of righteousness sanity. I somewhere read that Miguel De Cervantes thought of and worked on his book while being in a mental asylum himself. While he was grappling with his own notions of sanity, it makes one think of how greyish and diversely applicable the idea of sanity is. The degree of departure from reality and the loss of control over one's consciousness is a spectrum, and how lightly we go on using the terms of "being mad", when it actually reflects a relativity of our experience with respect to others. Whether it's an affliction or it's a choice, the author makes us question by putting the image of the ingenious hidalgo - Don Quixote de la Mancha, and makes us wonder how wrong is it to be happy in our own worlds?