Characterization Of Don Quixote

The protagonist, Don Quixote's obsessive reading of books of chivalry plays a major role in defining his character; his inspiration for his travels as a knight errant comes from the literature about chivalry that he reads, the literature that causes him to lose his mind and go mad. Everything that he usually experiences in his journey, first happened in the books that inspired his travels. The character, Dulcinea’s role as Quixote’s lady-love becomes equivalent with the position a king might hold in a true and honorable knight’s life.

Although Capote appears to be providing information and accounts on the town after the murders, his true purpose is to illuminate the corruption permeating Holcomb; thus asserting that all places that are innocent and serene are not immune from wicked influence.

Over the course of this semester, students of World Masterpieces by Amanda Drake have learned about “othering” and anti-heroism. Many of the central characters in the stories and plays that were assigned, exemplified anti heroism and othering. Anti-Heroes, by definition, are typically main characters of a story, play or movie, which lack classic “heroic” traits. Due to these characters lacking heroic traits, they are othered by society and peers, making these characters outcasts.

Truman Capote was conceived Truman Streckfus Persons on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Capote was as intriguing a character as the individuals who showed up in his stories. His folks were an odd match, a residential area young lady named Lillie Mae and a beguiling rascal called Arch. They went to a great extent to disregard their child, regularly abandoning him being taken care of by others. Capote spent quite a bit of his young life under the watchful eye of his mom's relatives in Monroeville, Alabama. In Monroeville, Capote got to know a young Harper Lee. The two were paradoxical to one another. Capote was a touchy individual who was singled out by different children for being a pushover, while Lee was an unpleasant and tumble boyish girl. In spite of their differences, Lee observed Capote to be an enjoyment, calling him "Merlin" for his inventive and imaginative

A sharp contrast is seen between the narration style of chapter 8 and 9 of Don Quixote. The seemingly flowing tale of Quixote and Basque’s great battle is abruptly halted, and then after much explanation regarding the finding and composition of the remainder, is the tale finally allowed to unfold.

Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It follows the adventures 

of Alonso Quixano, a retired elderly man who develops a fascination with chivalrous novels 

eventually become delusional, believing everything written to be true and currently going on in 

the Spanish country side where he lives (La Mancha). The novel itself contains a narration of 

Quixote’s adventures. These adventures are broken up into “Sally’s”. The first Sally feature 

Quixote’s first “quests”. After setting out early in the morning Quixote eventually wanders his 

way to an inn that he believes to be a castle, he asks the innkeeper who he believe to be a lord to 

dub him a knight. Have very little money Quixote’s spend the night in the stable with his horse, 

where he starts a fight with muleteers who are attempting to water their mules. Quixote’s take 

attempts to remove his gear from the trough as a threat and attacks the men. As a result the 

innkeeper tell Quixote’s to leave.


 Quixote’s next quest is that of “frees” a boy who is tied to a tree and being beaten by his 

master. After freeing the boy Quixote’s makes the master promise on a chivalric code to treat the 

boy fairly, upon leaving the beaten continues worse then it had previously been. His final quest is 

to defend the honor of his imagined lover, from traders he met on the road. After picking a fight 

with the traders Quixote’s is left badly wounded on the side of the road. He is found and

When a merchant responds by asking to see her Quixote decides he’s had enough and charges at them. In a rather comedic sequence of events Rocianante trips and throws Quixote to the ground where he is beat mercilessly by the annoyed merchants. With Quixote lying on the ground unable to move, any questions regarding our noble knight’s sanity are laid to rest. Thus ends the first adventure and first five chapters of the novel, in which Quixotes’ ridiculousness is clearly Cervantes’ literary tool to mock chivalric romances. However, in the later chapters of the novel Cervantes expands Quixote’s depth by highlighting his one admirable trait; his faith. Quixote is foolish, but he is also so convinced of his valiant knight-errantry that he actually turns victorious on several occasions. In his Lectures on Don Quixote Vladimir Nabakov lists the 40 encounters that occur in the book and notes that there are 20 defeats that balance perfectly with 20 victories. Despite the Quixote’s delusional pursuits of the fantastical, this equal balance of defeats and victories proves that Cervantes intended Quixote to actually be a moderately heroic character. Thus, on the surface we see Quixote as a laughable character and a poor excuse for a knight, however by allowing him frequent success Cervantes lends merit to the fantasist spirit that our Man de la

While Gilgamesh and Achilles were fearsome warriors pitted against the most fearsome and ferocious beasts in their land, poor Don Quixote is only a poor gentleman who badly wants to be a hero. He is, and should be, an “anti-hero” because he is delusional toward the world around him. His infatuation with books of chivalry leads him to attack a windmill, which then “defeats” him and badly injures him. He attacks a flock of sheep, the most harmless and defenseless of all animals, because he thinks that they are a broad army full of warriors of old. He is often stupid, leading himself to charge “”into the middle of [a] flock of sheep” like the life of a thousand people depended on him (Cervantes 450). This man perfectly defines an anti-hero, and

Depicted on the cover of Quixote’s Soldiers is a group of Mexican- American men and women in protest formation. They carry with them signs that say “Justice for La Raza,” “Ando sangrando igual que tu,” and “Cops out of our communities!” David Montejano argues that Mexican- American reform groups are often left out of the Civil Rights Movement taught in a classroom. San Antonio was the birthplace of the Chicano movement. Here, various organizations were formed to encourage the government to increase Mexican- Americans opportunities in the educational field as well as in the work field. The Brown Power movement campaigned for Mexican- Americans to reject assimilation into the American mainstream society, and celebrate their Chicano history.

“At the heart of Don Quixote is the discrepancy between external appearance and internal perception.” says Wirfs-Brock (2). In that respect, Don Quixote is depicted as a character who is guided merely by his internal perceptions, disregarding external appearances. Most of the time, he is deluded, depended on his faculty of imagination, stuck in his make-believe world through the guidance of chivalric books he is obsessed with and “everything he read in his books took possession of his imagination” (1/1 p.27). He takes everything he reads in those books for real as if they were parts of history and decides to join this glorious history by making a knight errant of him. In order to put all he has read into practice, he puts on a rusty armor, devises a heroic name for himself which is ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’ and for his horse which is ‘Rocinante’. Additionally, since “a knight errant without a lady-love is a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul” (1/1 p.29) he finds “a good-looking peasant girl” called Aldonza Lorenzo and decides to call her ‘Dulcinea del Toboso’. So this peasant girl becomes a princess, the most beautiful lady in the world for him to whom he may serve “as if he really were in love” (1/1 p.31).

Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a masterpiece in many senses of the word: at the time of its conception, it was hailed as a revolutionary work of literature that defined a genre, in later centuries regarded as an acerbic social commentary, a slightly misshapen romantic tragedy, and even as a synthesis of existentialist and post-modernist features. At the centre of this Spanish satirical chronicle is the perplexing character Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s personality and perspective is rapidly established fromsince the beginning of the novel, revealing unabashedly to readers that he is mad. The source of his madness lies in the extent to which Don Quixote acts on his delusions and projections unto reality as he saunters through Cervantes’ Andalusia. Don Quixote’s delusions have two primary functions in the novel: demonstrating the reality and tragedy of Cervantes’ manifestation of idyllic themes of love and chivalry, and revealing certain characteristics about narration.

Throughout Don Quixote’s adventures there are a numerous times he displays valiance and chivalry. Once Don Quixote is leaving the inn he was disturbed by whimpers he heard coming from nearby woods. He does not become fearful, he was unassumingly ready to help those he felt were in need. In part one, chapter four Don Quixote states ‘“ I thank heaven for the favor it now grants me, providing me with such a early opportunity to fulfill the duties of my profession and gather the fruit of my honorable intentions’”(Cervantes 1013).

While illiteracy is not something to boast about, Sancho certainly seems at an advantage to Don Quixote, whose reading has drove him “completely out of his mind” (Cervantes 392). Sancho, while sometimes a little naïve, at least has a good head on his shoulders and a sound mind. He sets his mind “upon becoming governor” of the island that Quixote promises him, and stays with him even through the ridiculous sheep attacks and windmill charges (Cervantes 412). The illiteracy is a handicap, in one way, because if Sancho had read all of the stories that Quixote had been referring to, he might have realized earlier that the man was crazy and that he should leave. The illiteracy is an advantage, however, because his brain might have become fried as

Finding a faithful servant by the name of Sancho, he set out in order to find where good can be done. Along his journeys, he meets many people, and always seemed to categorize them in very simple, childlike ways. Either they were good, or bad – a damsel in distress or an evil wizard. Therefore, whenever someone was in his eyes an ugly troll or a devious enchantress, he believed it was his duty to fight them. Don Quixote was endlessly optimistic, he believed that by fighting for what is right, he would always win.

The novel Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes, is an exploration into the idea of created reality. Cervantes, through the character of Don Quixote, illustrates to readers how we as human beings often make reality to be whatever we want it to be.