When people talk about the greatest books ever written, Don Quixote is almost always mentioned. Published in Spain in 1605, this story of the chivalrous knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire Sancho Panza is regarded by many as the foundation of the modern novel. In its pages, Miguel de Cervantes weaves a memorable and comic tale that uses a wide variety of literary techniques, including metafiction, poetry, allusions, and realism. Its influence in the literary world is profound, and despite its daunting length (940 pages of tiny print in my version), I've always been interested in reading it. It's one of those books, you know? A bucket list-type of book for classics lovers.
I always struggle with how to write about books like this. The greatness of Don Quixote is universally recognized, so it feels foolish to offer my opinions on it, especially if any of them happen to be negative. After all, I read the classics just for the joy of it. I'm not a literary scholar, so my analysis would be suspect at best. So, rather than try to give this novel a "review," I'm going to record some of my thoughts and feelings on it in this space. I recognize that this work is a masterpiece. My goal here is to reflect on my personal reading experience.
The plot of the novel follows Don Quixote, a Spanish man driven crazy by his love of reading tales of knights and chivalry. He's read so many of these stories that he comes to believe he is a knight himself and that he is deeply in love with the beautiful Princess Dulcinea del Toboso. He decides to set off on a quest to seek his own adventures and become famous throughout the world. He convinces Sancho Panza, a loyal and dim neighbor of his, to take on the role of his squire, and the pair begin to wander the Spanish countryside, helping those in need, battling monsters, and defeating evildoers.
Of course, Don Quixote isn't really a knight, Dulcinea del Toboso doesn't really exist, and he doesn't really battle monsters or defeat evildoers. In reality, his chivalrous acts are comedic misadventures that entertain or confuse all the people around him. His first and most famous quest is when he fights the "giants" that are actually windmills, but he gets into many other situations like this throughout the text. He frees a group of convicted criminals under the assumption that they are being unjustly detained. He assaults a barber and wears his shaving basin on his head for quite some time, believing it to be a famous helmet. He tries to halt an invading army that is actually a flock of sheep. As he moves from one "adventure" to another, he relentlessly gets himself injured through falls, fights, and the tricks other people play on him. Sancho remains by his side through it all providing comic relief, too simple to understand if what Don Quixote says is real or if it is all a delusion.
The novel is split into two parts, and both parts stick to the same basic structure of following Don Quixote and Sancho Panza around as they get into one scrape after another. They move through different locations and interact with different people, but the essence of what they are doing stays constant. The one big difference between the two parts is that Don Quixote's adventures from part one are actually published in the universe of the novel by the time part two starts. This means that most of the other characters he comes across in part two have actually read what happened to him in part one. In this way, he does achieve the fame that he set out to achieve, but it's not fame he earned through noble deeds, it's fame he earned through people laughing at his mental instability.
This knowledge means that people are able to craft elaborate scenarios to trick him for their own entertainment. So in part two, instead of running across commonplace events and interpreting them through the lens of his "knighthood," random noblemen prank him mercilessly. They make him believe he took a trip on a flying wooden horse. They make him believe a crowd of female servants sprouted beards. They make him believe he is speaking to a bronze sculpture of a head. Perhaps most disturbing of all, they make him believe that Dulcinea has become enchanted and the only way to break the spell on her is for Sancho is whip himself 3,300 times. These tricks go on for quite some time until one of Don Quixote's neighbors, out of concern for his health, tricks him into renouncing his knighthood and coming home, where his adventures finally come to an end.
As this novel is over 900 pages, this was a long reading experience for me. By the end of the story, I felt like I'd been out on an adventure myself - and much like Don Quixote's journey, it had its ups and downs. One aspect of the story I really liked were the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza themselves. Cervantes did an excellent job making them pretty lovable. Don Quixote's unwavering belief in the rules of chivalry and the high standards to which he held himself were charming and the idea of him trying to bring honor to a dishonorable world was admirable. Sancho was endearing in his simple-mindedness and he had all of the funniest lines in the novel. It's clear in the text that he knew on some level that a lot of what Don Quixote said wasn't right, but he went along with it anyway, partly out of affection for his friend, and partly just in case Don Quixote's promise to gift him with an island to govern might eventually come true. He was a steadfast, loyal squire, and that was easy to like.
Another neat aspect of the novel was how Cervantes incorporated some petty revenge for plagiarism going on during his time. The second part of Don Quixote wasn't published until ten years after part one, and in those intervening years, a different author published their own part two of the story. It's clear from the text that Cervantes was very upset at this, as he has Don Quixote bring up the false story several times, roundly condemning it. He even goes so far as to have Don Quixote meet one of the characters from the fake part two, convince that character that he had never really met Don Quixote, and make him sign an affidavit swearing to that fact. As a lover of public shade being thrown, no matter how old it is, I enjoyed this.
What I struggled with a little bit was the pacing and the ultimate theme of the story. After a while, reading adventure after adventure got old. There wasn't enough variation in the plot to completely engage me in what was going on. Rather than having one overarching storyline, Don Quixote felt very episodic. The characters stumble from one situation to the next without an ultimate goal in mind. By the time I got to part two, I was basically reading just to finish. It was still genuinely funny and clever throughout, but so much repetition started to wear on me.
Despite those feelings, however, I did finish reading the whole thing. Unfortunately, I was left unclear on what the overall message of the story was supposed to be. I couldn't tell if Cervantes was saying that the world should have been more like Don Quixote, or if Don Quixote's ideas of chivalry were hopelessly out of date and inappropriate for his modern world. As a reader, I wanted the message to be the former, but the fact is that Cervantes doesn't show much sympathy for his hero. He tortures him mercilessly throughout the novel with beatings and injuries, then subjects him to a series of rather cruel pranks by the noblemen in part two of the story. All of the injuries and tricks are written for laughs, like Don Quixote and Sancho are just meant to be fools. There isn't really an indication that readers are supposed to feel bad for Don Quixote or to feel like he is being mistreated. I feel like that was something I brought into the story based on my own feelings, and not something Cervantes encouraged at all.
I feel like I missed something though, because that can't be right. If that's really true, and Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to be no more than a fool, why is this novel so beloved? People clearly see more to the story than a slapstick comedy. Ultimately, I think there are a couple of valid theme ideas floating around in here and readers should interpret the message however they want to, but I do wish that Cervantes had been a bit more clear on what he intended Don Quixote's ultimate purpose to be. I do acknowledge that the time period this was written in and the fact that I have to read a translated version of the work probably play parts in my lack of clarity here.
Although my opinions on Don Quixote ended up being mixed, I'm very happy that I made it all the way through the novel. The characters were so memorable and the story was so classic that I felt like I was reading history, which is why I love reading the classics in the first place. While I'm still wondering about what message Cervantes truly meant to send to his readers, I'm content to have had this experience. I can now cross this one off my literary bucket list and move onto another adventure.
Challenge Tally
Classics Club (#62 on my list): 47/100
Back to the Classics 2019 (Very Long Classic) 8/12 Books Read
Total Books Read in 2019: 32
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