don quixote character analysis essay

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes: Character Analysis Essay

In the novel Don Quixote, Cervantes depicts two opposite characters of Alonso Quixano and Sancho Panza. Don Quixote and Sancho are opposite personalities, each representing a different kind of sense. It is possible to say that Don Quixote is deprived “reason and the moral sense” of judgment and understanding, while Sancho possesses “reason” and “imagination”. Cervantes symbolically represents simple, contradictory elements rather than as complex and independent literary characters.

Physical differences and appearance allow Cervantes to unveil and underline different views and values of Don Quixote and Sancho. The long, thin, Grecoesque figure of Don Quixote underlines his nobility and idealism. Cervantes portrays that in the midst of the natural grandeur of the Sierra Morena, and, whether fighting windmills or wineskins, amongst goatherds or noblemen, hanging from his wrist or addressing the company gathered at the inn, he is always indisputably the center of attention.

Sancho, in contrast, is a fat rustic with a week-old beard, or a dark ogre from an oriental fairy tale. He is seen in the very first plate almost literally melting on his ass, his face a shapeless and grotesque ball. Don Quixote id depicted as a Romantic symbol, a heroic and idealistic figure whose laughable misadventures are turned into mythical feats. Cervantes portrays Sancho as buffoon and greedy villager of previous centuries, as a symbol of everything the Romantics considered ignoble, base, or earthy.

The main difference between the characters is perception of the world and human values: Don Quixote is depicted as idealist who believes in universal love, happiness and honesty while Sancho is depicted as a materialist who rejects human morality and values. Don Quixote says:

I may have won some kingdom that has others dependent upon it, which will be just the thing to enable thee to be crowned king of one of them. “In that case,” said Sancho Panza, “if I should become a king by one of those miracles your worship speaks of, even Juana Gutierrez, my old woman, would come to be queen and my children infantes” (Cervantes 2000).

Both Sancho’s sense of humor and his good sense show palpably from the very beginning and remain unchanged, though obviously not constant, throughout the novel. Sancho never oversteps the fine border-line that separates what is harmlessly and amusingly funny from what is abusive or at the expense or to the detriment of another person or animal. There is a change in Sancho’s personality between Parts I and II. In the last chapters of Part I Don Quixote is depicted as a madman who needs to be caged, and most of his idealism of the early chapters has subsided; hence, Sancho’s good sense and love for his master become more evident.

Also, in Part II Cervantes’s other characters begin to appreciate and praise, if not fully understand all the complexities of, Sancho’s keen sense of humor. A more important reason for this more favorable image of Sancho projected by the text is a drastic structural change that Cervantes decided upon between the writing of the Parts. This change in the technique of the narration in some degree conditions the perception readers have of the characters. In contrast to Sancho, the main features of Don Quixote are excessive self-confidence, serious lack of self-knowledge, and blindness to the unbridgeable chasm that lies between stations in life and those to which he aspires.

The theme of idealism prevails in this novel unveiling true human values and eternal love, friendly relations and romance. Idealism is found in relations between Don Quixote and Sancho that binds master and squire together, their gradual adaptation to one another and to new or changing circumstances, and their sincere need of and love for the other. There are inconsistencies n the character of the squire, though one of the inconsistent traits is always clearly dominant.

Sancho is presented now as a thief and highwayman, then as honest and compassionate. His great love for his ass is at times non existent, as when Sancho uses him as a shield to avoid being stoned or hurt; none the less, he is eager to continue with his master despite the voice of common sense that gnaws at his mind. Don Quixote idealizes his love to Dulcinea and becomes extreme naive in matters of love, his relentless pursuit of preferment, and his blind confidence in his nonexistent qualifications for office, all of which remind one of Sancho. Wanting to make “a world of his own”, he becomes a victim of this ego and dreams. His ambition to possess is ironically paralleled by a process of deep loss; his desire to expand his dreams is undercut by a process of systematic denudation (Eisner 43).

In real life, ideals and dreams allow us to achieve success and realize our desires. On the other hand, a person should avoid illusions and false ideals which can cause frustrations and desperation. Illusion is a distorted perception of reality and false interpretation of reality. Moral idealism of this sort keeps well in the heart of the adolescent, responsibility and change, and the equivocality and impermanence of human affairs have impressed the mind.

Idealism is not a a bad thing because it helps to follow humanistic values, a moral philosophy. A person can follow dreams and ideals if he/she is sure about their realization or if these false (unachievable) dream do not ruin life and destiny of a person. Simple ideals underlie decent behavior and dramatize the truths of the human heart. For instance, romantic idealism can suggest passion and true love, happiness and universal values. In order to avoid illusions, a person should take into account his/her past and plan his/her future in accordance with life chances and visible perspectives.

Cervantes, M. Don Quixote. 2000. Web.

Eisner, W. The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2005.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Experimental Novels › Analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote

Analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 31, 2019 • ( 0 )

Many critics maintain that the impulse that prompted Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616) to begin his great novel was a satiric one: He desired to satirize chivalric romances. As the elderly Alonso Quixano the Good (if that is his name) pores over the pages of these books in his study, his “brain dries up” and he imagines himself to be the champion who will take up the vanished cause of knighterrantry and wander the world righting wrongs, helping the helpless, defending the cause of justice, all for the greater glory of his lady Dulcinea del Toboso and his God.

As he leaves his village before dawn, clad in rusty armor and riding his broken-down nag, the mad knight becomes Don Quixote de la Mancha. His first foray is brief, and he is brought back home by friends from his native village. Despite the best efforts of his friends and relations, the mad old man embarks on a second journey, this time accompanied by a peasant from his village, Sancho Panza, who becomes the knight’s squire. The Don insists on finding adventure everywhere, mistaking windmills for giants, flocks of sheep for attacking armies, puppet shows for real life. His squire provides a voice of down-to-earth reason, but Quixote always insists that vile enchanters have transformed the combatants to embarrass and humiliate him. Don Quixote insists on his vision of the ideal in the face of the cold facts of the world; Sancho Panza maintains his proverbial peasant wisdom in the face of his master’s madness.

In their travels and adventures, they encounter life on the roads of Spain. Sometimes they are treated with respect— for example, by “the gentleman in green” who invites them to his home and listens to Quixote with genuine interest—but more often they are ridiculed, as when the Duke and Duchess bring the knight and squire to their estate only for the purpose of mocking them. Finally, a young scholar from Quixote’s native village, Sampson Carrasco, defeats the old knight in battle and forces him to return to his home, where he dies peacefully, having renounced his mad visions and lunatic behavior.

While it is necessary to acknowledge the satiric intent of Cervantes’ novel, the rich fictional world of Don Quixote de la Mancha utterly transcends its local occasion. On the most personal level, the novel can be viewed as one of the most intimate evaluations of a life ever penned by a great author. When Don Quixote decides to take up the cause of knight-errantry, he opens himself to a life of ridicule and defeat, a life that resembles Cervantes’ own life, with its endless reversals of fortune, humiliations, and hopeless struggles. Out of this life of failure and disappointment Cervantes created the “mad knight,” but he also added the curious human nobility and the refusal to succumb to despair in the face of defeat that turns Quixote into something more than a comic character or a ridiculous figure to be mocked. Although there are almost no points in the novel where actual incidents from Cervantes’ life appear directly or even transformed into fictional disguise, the tone and the spirit, the succession of catastrophes with only occasional moments of slight glory, and the resilience of human nature mark the novel as the most personal work of the author, the one where his singularly difficult life and his profoundly complex emotional responses to that life found form and structure.

If the novel is the record of Cervantes’ life, the fiction also records a moment in Spanish national history when fortunes were shifting and tides turning. At the time of Cervantes’ birth, Spain’s might and glory were at their peak. The wealth from conquests of Mexico and Peru returned to Spain, commerce boomed, and artists recorded the sense of national pride with magnificent energy and power. By the time Don Quixote de la Mancha was published, the Spanish Empire was beginning its decline. A series of military disasters, including the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English and the revolt of Flanders, had shaken the once mighty nation. In the figure of Don Quixote, the greatest of a richly remembered past combines with the hard facts of age, weakness, and declining power. The character embodies a moment of Spanish history and the Spanish people’s own sense of vanishing glory in the face of irreversible decline.

Don Quixote de la Mancha also stands as the greatest literary embodiment of the Counter-Reformation. Throughout Europe, the Reformation was moving with the speed of new ideas, changing the religious landscape of country after country. Spain stood proud as a Catholic nation, resisting any changes. Standing alone against the flood of reform sweeping Europe displayed a kind of willed madness, but the nobility and determination of Quixote to fight for his beliefs, no matter what the rest of the world maintained, reflects the strength of the Spanish will at this time. Cervantes was a devout and loyal believer, a supporter of the Church, and Don Quixote may be the greatest fictional Catholic hero, the battered knight of the Counter-Reformation.

The book also represents fictionally the various sides of the Spanish spirit and the Spanish temper. In the divisions and contradictions found between the Knight of the Sad Countenance and his unlikely squire, Sancho Panza, Cervantes paints the two faces of the Spanish soul: The Don is idealistic, sprightly, energetic, and cheerful, even in the face of overwhelming odds, but he is also overbearing, domineering Sancho, who is earthy, servile, and slothful. The two characters seem unlikely companions and yet they form a whole, the one somehow incomplete without the other and linked throughout the book through their dialogues and debates. In drawing master and servant, Cervantes presents the opposing truths of the spirit of his native land.

Characterization

The book can also be seen as a great moment in the development of fiction, the moment when the fictional character was freed into the real world of choice and change. When the gentleman of La Mancha took it into his head to become a knight-errant and travel through the world redressing wrongs and winning eternal glory, the face of fiction permanently changed. Character in fiction became dynamic, unpredictable, and spontaneous. Until that time, character in fiction had existed in service of the story, but now the reality of change and psychological energy and freedom of the will became a permanent hallmark of fiction, as it already was of drama and narrative poetry. The title character’s addled wits made the new freedom all the more impressive. The determination of Don Quixote, the impact of his vision on the world, and the world’s hard reality as it impinges on the Don make for shifting balances and constant alterations in fortune that are psychologically believable. The shifting balance of friendship, devotion, and perception between the knight and his squire underlines this freedom, as does the power of other characters in the book to affect Don Quixote’s fortunes directly: the niece, the housekeeper, the priest, the barber, Sampson Carrasco, the Duke, and the Duchess. There is a fabric of interaction throughout the novel, and characters in the novel change as they encounter new adventures, new people, and new ideas.

One way Cervantes chronicles this interaction is in dialogue. Dialogue had not played a significant or defining role in fiction before Don Quixote de la Mancha . As knight and squire ride across the countryside and engage in conversation, dialogue becomes the expression of character, idea, and reality. In the famous episode with windmills early in the first part of the novel (when Quixote views the windmills on the plain and announces that they are giants that he will wipe from the face of the earth, and Sancho innocently replies, “What giants?”), the dialogue not only carries the comedy but also becomes the battleground on which the contrasting visions of life engage one another—to the delight of the reader. The long exchanges between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza provide priceless humor but also convey two different realities that meet, struggle, and explode in volleys of words. In giving his characters authentic voices that carry ideas, Cervantes brought to fiction a new truth that remains a standard of comparison.

The Narrator

Don Quixote de la Mancha is also as modern as the most experimental of later fiction. Throughout the long novel, Cervantes plays with the nature of the narrator, raising constant difficult questions as to who is telling the story and to what purpose. In the riotously funny opening page of the novel, the reader encounters a narrator not only unreliable but also lacking in the basic facts necessary to tell the story. He chooses not to tell the name of the village where his hero lives, and he is not even sure of his hero’s name, yet the narrator protests that the narrative must be entirely truthful.

In chapter 9, as Don Quixote is preparing to do battle with the Basque, the narrative stops; the narrator states that the manuscript from which he is culling this story is mutilated and incomplete. Fortunately, some time later in Toledo, he says, he came upon an old Arabic manuscript by Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli that continues the adventures. For the remainder of the novel, the narrator claims to be providing a translation of this manuscript—the manuscript and the second narrator, the Arab historian, both lacking authority and credibility. In the second part of the novel, the narrator and the characters themselves are aware of the first part of the novel as well as of a “false Quixote,” a spurious second part written by an untalented Spanish writer named Avallaneda who sought to capitalize on the popularity of the first part of Don Quixote de la Mancha by publishing his own sequel. The “false Quixote” is on the narrator’s mind, the characters’ minds, and somehow on the mind of Cide Hamete Benengeli. These shifting perspectives, the multiple narrative voices, the questionable reliability of the narrators, and the “false” second part are all tricks, narrative sleight of hand as complex as anything found in the works of Faulkner , Vladimir Nabokov , or Jorge Luis Borges . In his Lectures on Don Quixote (1983), Nabokov oddly makes no reference to Cervantes’ narrative games; perhaps the old Spanish master’s shadow still loomed too close to the modern novelist.

None of these approaches to the novel, however, appropriate as they may be, can begin to explain fully the work’s enduring popularity or the strange manner in which the knight and his squire have ridden out of the pages of a book into the other artistic realms of orchestral music, opera, ballet, and painting, where other artists have presented their visions of Quixote and Sancho.Acurrent deeper and more abiding than biography, history, national temper, or literary landmark flows through the book and makes it speak to all manner of readers in all ages.

Early in the novel, Cervantes begins to dilute his strong satiric intent. The reader can laugh with delight at the inanity of the mad knight but never with the wicked, unalloyed glee that pure satire evokes. The knight begins to loom over the landscape; his madness brushes sense; his ideals demand defense. The reader finds him- or herself early in the novel taking an attitude equivalent to that of the two young women of easy virtue who see Quixote when he arrives at an inn, which he believes to be a castle, on his first foray. Quixote calls them “two beauteous maidens . . . taking air at the gate of the castle,” and they fall into helpless laughter, confronted with such a mad vision of themselves as “maidens.” In time, however, because of Quixote’s insistence on the truth of his vision, they help him out of his armor and set a table for him. They treat him as a knight, not as a mad old fool; he treats them as ladies, and they behave as ladies. The laughter stops, and, for a pure moment, life transforms itself and human beings transcend themselves.

Contradictions

This mingling of real chivalry and transcendent ideals with the absurdity of character and mad action creates the tensions in the book as well as its strange melancholy beauty and haunting poignancy. The book is unlike any other ever written. John Berryman has commented on this split between the upheld ideal and the riotously real, observing that the reader “does not know whether to laugh or cry, and does both.” This old man with his dried-up brain, with his squire who has no “salt in his brain pan,” with his rusty armor, his pathetic steed, and his lunatic vision that changes windmills into giants and flocks of sheep into attacking armies, this crazy old fool becomes a real knight-errant. The true irony of the book and its history is that Don Quixote actually becomes a model for knighthood. He may be a foolish, improbable knight, but with his squire, horse, and armor he has ridden into the popular imagination of the world not only as a ridiculous figure but also as a champion; he is a real knight whose vision may often cloud, who sees what he wants to see, but he is also one who demonstrates real virtue and courage and rises in his rhetoric and daring action to real heights of greatness.

Perhaps Cervantes left a clue as to the odd shift in his intention. The contradictory titles he assigns to his knight suggest this knowledge. The comic, melancholy strain pervades “Knight of the Sad Countenance” in the first part of the novel, and the heroic strain is seen in the second part when the hero acquires the new sobriquet “Knight of the Lions.” The first title comes immediately after his adventure with a corpse and is awarded him by his realistic companion, Sancho. Quixote has attacked a funeral procession, seeking to avenge the dead man. Death, however, cannot be overcome; the attempted attack merely disrupts the funeral, and the valiant knight breaks the leg of an attending churchman. The name “Knight of the Sad Countenance” fits Quixote’s stance here and through much of the book. Many of the adventures he undertakes are not only misguided but also unwinnable. Quixote may be Christlike, but he is not Christ, and he cannot conquer Death.

The adventure with the lions earns for him his second title and offers the other side of his journey as a knight. Encountering a cage of lions being taken to the king, Quixote becomes determined to fight them. Against all protest, he takes his stand, and the cage is opened. One of the lions stretches, yawns, looks at Quixote, and lies down. Quixote proclaims a great victory and awards himself the name “Knight of the Lions.” A delightfully comic episode, the scene can be viewed in two ways—as a nonadventure that the knight claims as a victory or as a genuine moment of triumph as the knight undertakes an outlandish adventure and proves his genuine bravery while the king of beasts realizes the futility of challenging the unswerving old knight. Quixote, by whichever route, emerges as conqueror. Throughout his journeys, he often does emerge victorious, despite his age, despite his illusions, despite his dried-up brain.

When, at the book’s close, he is finally defeated and humiliated by Sampson Carrasco and forced to return to his village, the life goes out of him. The knight Don Quixote is replaced, however, on the deathbed by Alonso Quixano the Good. Don Quixote does not die, for the elderly gentleman regains his wits and becomes a new character. Don Quixote cannot die, for he is the creation of pure imagination. Despite the moving and sober conclusion, the reader cannot help but sense that the death scene being played out does not signify the end of Don Quixote. The knight escapes and remains free. He rides out of the novel, with his loyal companion Sancho at his side, into the golden realm of myth. He becomes the model knight he hoped to be. He stands tall with his spirit, his ideals, his rusty armor, and his broken lance as the embodiment of man’s best intentions and impossible folly. As Dostoevski so wisely said, when the Lord calls the Last Judgment, man should take with him this book and point to it, for it reveals all of man’s deep and fatal mystery, his glory and his sorrow.

Major works Plays: El trato de Argel, pr. 1585 (The Commerce of Algiers, 1870); Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, 1615 (includes Pedro de Urdemalas [Pedro the Artful Dodger, 1807], El juez de los divorcios [The Divorce Court Judge, 1919], Los habladores [Two Chatterboxes, 1930], La cueva de Salamanca [The Cave of Salamanca, 1933], La elección de los alcaldes de Daganzo [Choosing a Councilman in Daganzo, 1948], La guarda cuidadosa [The Hawk-Eyed Sentinel, 1948], El retablo de las maravillas [The Wonder Show, 1948], El rufián viudo llamada Trampagos [Trampagos the Pimp Who Lost His Moll, 1948], El viejo celoso [The Jealous Old Husband, 1948], and El vizcaíno fingido [The Basque Imposter, 1948]); El cerco de Numancia, pb. 1784 (wr. 1585; Numantia: A Tragedy, 1870; also known as The Siege of Numantia); The Interludes of Cervantes, 1948. poetry: Viaje del Parnaso, 1614 (The Voyage to Parnassus, 1870).

Bibliography Bloom, Harold, ed. Cervantes. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. _______. Cervantes’s “Don Quixote.” Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2001. Cascardi, Anthony J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Castillo, David R. (A)wry Views: Anamorphosis, Cervantes, and the Early Picaresque. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2001. Close, A. J. Cervantes and the Comic Mind of His Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Durán, Manuel. Cervantes. New York: Twayne, 1974. Hart, Thomas R. Cervantes’ Exemplary Fictions: A Study of the “Novelas ejemplares.” Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. McCrory, Donald P. No Ordinary Man: The Life and Times of Miguel de Cervantes. Chester Springs, Pa.: Peter Owen, 2002. Mancing, Howard. Cervantes’ “Don Quixote”: A Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on “Don Quixote.” Edited by Fredson Bowers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Riley, E. C. Cervantes’s Theory of the Novel. 1962. Reprint. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 1992. Weiger, John G. The Substance of Cervantes. London: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Williamson, Edwin, ed. Cervantes and the Modernists: The Question of Influence. London: Tamesis, 1994. Source : Rollyson, Carl. Critical Survey Of Long Fiction . 4th ed. New Jersey: Salem Press, 2010

Don Quixote

Miguel de cervantes, don quixote de la mancha quotes in don quixote.

In short, our hidalgo was soon so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn, and his days from dawn till dusk, until the lack of sleep the excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad. … The idea that this whole fabric of famous fabrications was real so established itself in his mind that no history in the world was truer for him.

And since whatever our adventurer thought, saw, or imagined seemed to him to be as it was in the books he’d read, as soon as he saw the inn he took it for a castle with its four towers and their spires of shining silver.

There is no reason why someone with a plebeian name should not be a knight, for every man is the child of his own deeds.

But Don Quixote was so convinced that they were giants that he neither heard his squire Sancho’s shouts nor saw what stood in front of him.

Let me add that when a painter wants to become famous for his art, he tries to copy originals by the finest artists he knows. And this same rule holds good for nearly all the trades and professions of importance that serve to adorn a society.

An ass you are, an ass you will remain and an ass you will still be when you end your days on this earth, and it is my belief that when you come to breathe your last you still will not have grasped the fact that you are an animal.

It is not the responsibility of knights errant to discover whether the afflicted, the enchained, and the oppressed whom they encounter on the road are reduced to these circumstances and suffer their distress for the vices, or for their virtues: the knight’s sole responsibility is to succor them as people in need, having eyes only for their sufferings, not for their misdeeds.

Don Quixote was developing his arguments in such an orderly and lucid way that for the time being none of those listening could believe he was a madman.

It is possible that, since you have not been knighted, as I have, the enchantments in this place do not affect you, and that your understanding is unclouded, and that you can form judgments about the affairs of the castle as they really and truly are, rather than as they appeared to me.

But one man had been plunged into the deepest depths of despair, and that was the barber, whose basin, there before his very eyes, had turned into Mambrino’s helmet, and whose pack-saddle, he was very sure, was about to turn into the splendid caparisons of some handsome steed.

…whereas drama should, as Cicero puts it, be a mirror of human life, an exemplar of customs and an image of truth, there modern plays are just mirrors of absurdity, exemplars of folly and images of lewdness.

Speaking for myself, I can say that ever since I became a knight errant I have been courageous, polite, generous, well-bred, magnanimous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient and long-suffering in the face of toil, imprisonment, and enchantment.

I am merely striving to make the world understand the delusion under which it labours in not renewing within itself the happy days when the order of knight-errantry carried all before it. But these depraved times of ours do not deserve all those benefits enjoyed by the ages when knights errant accepted as their responsibility and took upon their shoulders the defense of kingdoms, the relief of damsels, the succour of orphans and wards, and chastisement of the arrogant and the rewarding of the humble.

It’s so very intelligible that it doesn’t pose any difficulties at all: children leaf through it, adolescents read it, grown men understand it and old men praise it, and, in short, it’s so well-thumbed and well-perused and well-known by all kinds of people that as soon as they see a skinny nag pass by they say: “Look, there goes Rocinante.” And the people who have most taken to it are the page-boys. There’s not a lord’s antechamber without its Quixote . … All in all, this history provides the most delightful and least harmful entertainment ever, because nowhere in it can one find the slightest suspicion of language that isn’t wholesome or thoughts that aren’t Catholic.

And so, O Sancho, our works must not stray beyond the limits imposed by the Christian religion that we profess. In slaying giants, we must slay pride; in our generosity and magnanimity, we must slay envy; in our tranquil demeanor and serene disposition, we must slay anger; in eating as little as we do and keeping vigil as much as we do, we must slay gluttony and somnolence; in our faithfulness to those whom we have made the mistresses of our thoughts, we must slay lewdness and lust; in wandering all over the world in search of opportunities to become famous knights as well as good Christians, we must slay sloth.

…he sometimes thought [Quixote] sane and sometimes mad, because what he said was coherent, elegant and well expressed, and what he did was absurd, foolhardy and stupid.

I cannot bring myself to believe that everything recorded in this chapter happened to the brave Don Quixote exactly as described… Yet I can’t believe that Don Quixote was lying, because he was the most honest hidalgo and the noblest knight of his time: he couldn’t have told a lie to save himself from being executed. … so I merely record it, without affirming either that it is false or that it is true.

…Don Quixote was amazed by what was happening; and that was the first day when he was fully convinced that he was a real knight errant, not a fantasy one, seeing himself treated in the same way as he’d read that such knights used to be treated in centuries past.

My intentions are always directed towards worthy ends, that is to say to do good to all and harm nobody; and whether the man who believes this, puts it into practice and devotes his life to it deserves to be called a fool is something for Your Graces, most excellent Duke and Duchess, to determine.

My mind has been restored to me, and it is now clear and free, without those gloomy shadows of ignorance cast over me by my wretched, obsessive reading of those detestable books of chivalry. Now I can recognize their absurdity and their deceitfulness, and my only regret is that this discovery has come so late that it leaves me no time to make amends by reading other books that might be a light for my soul.

You must congratulate me, my good sirs, because I am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha but Alonso Quixano, for whom my way of life earned me the nickname of “the Good”. I am now the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and the whole infinite horde or his descendants; now all those profane histories of knight-errantry are odious to me; now I acknowledge my folly and the peril in which I was placed by reading them; now, by God’s mercy, having at long last learned my lesson, I abominate them all.

For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was for him to act, for me to write; we two are one.

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Don Quixote

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Prologue-Chapter 9

Part 1, Chapters 10-19

Part 1, Chapters 20-29

Part 1, Chapters 30-39

Part 1, Chapters 40-49

Part 1, Chapters 50-52

Part 2, Prologue-Chapter 9

Part 2, Chapters 10-19

Part 2, Chapters 20-29

Part 2, Chapters 30-39

Part 2, Chapters 40-49

Part 2, Chapters 50-59

Part 2, Chapters 60-69

Part 2, Chapters 70-74

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Alonso Quixano / Don Quixote de La Mancha

Alonso Quixano is the protagonist of the novel and the title character. He is a thin unremarkable man and part of the lower ranks of the Spanish nobility. As he approaches 50 years old, he suffers from an identity crisis. He becomes bored and unsatisfied with life in his house, and he wishes to become a knight, just like the knights errant he has read about in the books in his library. Quixano abandons his old name and gives himself a name more befitting a knight, fully embracing the identity of Don Quixote de La Mancha. He decides he will go out into the world on an adventure and spread the ideals of chivalry as practiced by the knights in his beloved books. His new identity is a complete fabrication. He invents his new name and title as well as reinventing his horse and a local peasant woman to become characters in his new fictitious life. Quixote’s embrace of chivalry is a challenge to set identities. He shows how identities are entirely made by humans, and they can be made again and again. By the end of the novel, he has fully embraced his identity as Don Quixote, The Knight of the Sorrowful Face. His invented identity is more famous than anyone he was in the past. By reinventing himself as a knight, Quixote lays down a challenge to the concept of identity as a social construct and teaches the world that people have more power over themselves than they might have imagined.

While Quixote’s identity might be a triumph, his grip on reality is not always firm. He exposes the fragile foundations of identity but does so by fully embracing his own delusions. Quixote cannot distinguish between reality and the images he sees in his head. An inn becomes a castle, windmills become giants, and a middle-aged man from an unremarkable background becomes a famous knight errant. Quixote is committed to his delusion, and he is sincere in his beliefs. His complete dedication to the world as he imagines it means he truly believes the windmills are giants, and he truly believes Dulcinea is the most beautiful woman in the world. When he is finally defeated in a duel, he pleads with his opponent to kill him rather than force him to abandon his beliefs. Quixote is so completely devoted to his delusion he is willing to die for the cause. The sincerity of his convictions makes him a more sympathetic character as he demonstrates—though he may be unrealistic and absurd—he is completely dedicated to his particular interpretation of the world. In fact, his conviction is so strong that other characters eventually come to see the world as he sees it. By the end of the novel, Quixote is famous. He is known throughout Spain as a knight errant, and his friends beg him to return to the chivalry that made him so happy. In an ironic twist, the complete conviction of Quixote convinces other characters to embrace his delusion. He reshapes the world in his image, changing reality to suit his desires.

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Quixote’s death is the final irony of a complicated character. After falling sick for nearly a week, he wakes up and rejects his status as a knight. Quixote declared himself a knight, and people claimed that he was “mad.” After he showed the world he deserved to be called a knight and after he forced the world to accept the importance of chivalry, those same people labeled him “mad” for returning to their earlier idea of normality. Quixote relinquishes his identity at the end of the novel and dies. He leaves behind a great legacy, becoming the most famous knight errant in the country. His fame and fortune show the fragile and malleable nature of “sanity.” Quixote may have been absurd, confused, and arrogant, but by the end of the novel his actions reshaped the world in accordance with his shifting “sanity.”

Sancho Panza

Panza is a peasant man who lives near Quixote. At first, he is convinced to join Quixote’s adventure by promises of fame and fortune. He is also more than a little intrigued by the strange and arrogant man who dresses in a cardboard helmet and insists he is a knight. Over the course of the novel, however, Panza changes. He becomes fiercely loyal to his master, and even when he is given everything he ever wanted, he is willing to give up fame and fortune to return to Quixote’s side. Furthermore, he becomes deeply engrained in Quixote’s delusions. While he is initially the person who points out the giants are actually windmills, he eventually begins to see the world through the lens of Quixote’s delusions. He blames magicians for everything that goes wrong, convinces himself he has seen the world from high up on the back of a flying wooden horse, and demands the world recognize his wit when a counterfeit volume of adventures is published in which he is a character. Panza may begin the novel as a greedy, self-interested cynic, but he ends the novel as Quixote’s greatest friend and an equal partner in his master’s absurdity.

Unlike Quixote, Panza has no social status. Quixote is an aristocrat, and he is permitted to call himself Don and a knight. Panza lacks this social standing. He is a peasant, and he is fiercely insistent that he recognize his place in society. When the people of the island welcome him as their new governor, he demands that they do not refer to him as Don Panza. Furthermore, he is keenly aware of his own lack of financial resources. He joins the adventure to become rich, but the limits of his financial ambition are clear. By the end of the novel, he cares more about owning a fine donkey than ruling over an island. His needs are practical and immediate: His farm and his family have no place in the courts of the nobles, he believes, but they could use gold coins or a new donkey. Panza’s keen awareness of his place in society is a running joke that delineates between those with wealth and those without. He lacks the ambition and the status to fully join his master’s delusion but creates his own separate form of unreality more suited to his social status. Panza never believes that he can become a glorious knight like his master, but he certainly believes he can achieve glory as a famous squire.

The friendship between Panza and Quixote is the backbone of the novel. The men frequently argue, and Panza is dismissed by his master as foolish and ineloquent. Panza is criticized for using proverbs frequently, though Quixote’s love of chivalry is just a more pretentious version of traditional knowledge and insight shared through easily consumable stories. In this respect, the men are often the same but viewed from different perspectives. They share a sense of loyalty, a sense of duty, and a strange view of the world. While Panza may occasionally be cynical, suspicious, or dishonest, he is always sincere about his loyalty to Quixote. When they are separate, they pine for one another. When Quixote falls sick, Panza tries everything to cheer him up. Panza joins his master’s adventure because he is promised fame and fortune, but he comes to realize the real fortune is the friend he makes in Quixote.

Dulcinea del Toboso

Dulcinea del Toboso is a mysterious presence in the novel. Only Panza and Quixote are mentioned more often by name, but the elusive Dulcinea never appears in person. Instead, her character is created through the conversations of other people. Her main role is to be the chivalric foil to Quixote. When he becomes a knight, he realizes he needs a princess to whom he can dedicate his good deeds. He wants someone whose beauty and innocence he can praise at every opportunity. Quixote does not know any such woman, so he picks a local peasant woman whom he has never met and decides this woman is Dulcinea and that she is the perfect woman. Like the windmills, Dulcinea is part of Quixote’s delusions. She is a character who exists entirely in his head. Like most of his delusions, however, his sheer force of will manifests her into a real presence in the novel. Dulcinea becomes a character because she is talked about, praised, and complimented so often. Dulcinea as a character is a cipher for Quixote’s delusion. She exists at first to show the absurdity of his beliefs and then, later in the novel, her growing fame shows his capacity to manifest change in a world through the sheer force of his will. Dulcinea the beautiful princess may not exist, but Quixote makes her famous anyway, turning her into a character in her own right.

Panza provides an alternative perspective on Dulcinea. As Quixote talks about the local woman, Panza realizes he knows the peasant woman on whom Dulcinea is based. Panza realizes that in reality Dulcinea is an unremarkable, not particularly beautiful peasant woman with a sordid reputation. When Quixote asks to see Dulcinea or when he asks Panza to deliver a letter to her, Panza is caught in a bind. He must either point out his master’s delusions, lie, or accept Quixote’s view of the world. Dulcinea represents a choice for Panza. At first, he lists the real Dulcinea’s flaws. Then he tries to trick and lie to Quixote about her. Finally, he comes to accept Quixote’s view of the world. He blames magicians and enchanters for her strange appearance and while he will not whip himself on her behalf, he accepts his master’s need to save the beautiful princess. Panza’s willingness to indulge his master’s delusions regarding Dulcinea can be used to chart the course of their friendship, from cynical mockery to loyal devotion (with a little self-interested financial motivation at the same time).

Sanson Carrasco

Sanson Carrasco is a young scholar who plots with Pero Perez and Master Nicholas to bring Quixote home. At first, he is presented as a youthful intellectual and someone who can match Quixote’s love of literature and rhetoric . Eventually, however, he becomes Quixote’s rival and helps to bring about the protagonist’s downfall. Carrasco hatches a plan to duel against Quixote and expose Quixote’s absurdity to the world. By beating him as a knight, Carrasco hopes he can show Quixote’s claims are hollow. He hopes that doing so will force Quixote to give up his ridiculous adventure and come home. However, Quixote wins. To Carrasco, this loss is not just a physical defeat. He feels embarrassed on an intellectual level. While Quixote’s stories tell of knights who are obsessed with honor according to the chivalric code, Carrasco is obsessed with his own ego. Being beaten by Quixote is a wound to his arrogance and his intellectualism; he cannot accept he has been beaten by a man who believes in fairy tales and absurd ideas. As such, he becomes obsessed. He chases Quixote across Spain and tries to trick him into fighting another duel. In doing so, Carrasco abandons his own ideals and accepts Quixote’s view of the world. Carrasco was once a sensible young intellectual, but after the defeat to Quixote, he becomes obsessed with regaining his honor against a rival knight. He has become a character in the works of chivalric fiction Quixote is creating. To beat Quixote, Carrasco is forced to accept Quixote’s view of the world. While Carrasco might triumph in the final duel in a literal sense, he loses because he surrenders himself to Quixote’s ideas. Carrasco is morally defeated by Quixote because he is forced to embrace all of Quixote’s ideas and reject his own identity to win. Carrasco’s victory in the duel is a literal triumph and a moral defeat, demonstrating the extent to which he has become obsessed with the same ideas and ethos he once dismissed as absurd.

Miguel de Cervantes / The Narrator

Miguel de Cervantes is the author of Don Quixote and the narrator of the novel. Through his narration, he emerges as a character in his own right. While he narrates most of the actual story from the third person perspective with Quixote as the protagonist , the narration occasionally slips into a second story about how the novel itself was written. Across the two parts of the novel, Cervantes engages in a quest for truth. He disparages the man who wrote a counterfeit version of Quixote’s adventures (something that occurred in real life) and turns this grievance into a part of the plot. Cervantes and his loathing for the counterfeit volume are echoed by Quixote in a moment when the narrator and the protagonist become mirrors of one another, sharing their annoyances and their desire to establish the truth.

The way Cervantes seeks out the truth via translations from Cide Hamete Benengeli hints at the complicated tension between fiction and reality. Cervantes’s narration is not a direct retelling of events. Rather, he is parsing the truth through several witness accounts and at least two languages. Reality becomes an elusive, ephemeral idea, whether it is being altered by notes in the margin, lost due to missing volumes, or invented by counterfeiters who want to make money by imitating Cervantes. As a result, Cervantes becomes a reflection of his character. He is tilting against the windmills of reality, trying to remodel the world he believes is always against him in his own image.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Don Quixote — Complex Character of Don Quixote

Complex Character of Don Quixote

Categories: Character Don Quixote

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Published: Jun 13, 2024

Words: 684 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Introduction, body paragraph, chivalric ideals and noble intentions, delusional worldview and mental state, influence on others and societal impact.

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Analysis Of The Character Of Don Quixote In Miguel De Cervantes' Novel

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“Don Quixote” by Cervantes: Character Analysis Essay

Literary Theory and Criticism

Analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote

Characterization

The Narrator

Contradictions

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Don Quixote

Don Quixote

Character Analysis

Alonso Quixano / Don Quixote de La Mancha

Sancho Panza

Dulcinea del Toboso

Sanson Carrasco

Miguel de Cervantes / The Narrator

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