Don Quixote Analysis

‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka is basically a journey into fantasy land, and by that very virtue succeeds in awakening curiosity and intrigue into the reader’s mind, because man is, by nature, curious and inquisitive and loves creating fantasies.

Despite heroes being their own individual characters, they are all represented by a common theme. For example, in the book, The Alchemist the hero, Santiago, takes a journey from his beginnings in Spain to reaching his own Personal Legend, despite his many obstacles. Santiago relates to the big idea in this novel, by overcoming the many hardships, journeys, and sacrifices he endured to reach his destiny. Therefore, the universal theme of “Achieving one’s destiny, creates great sacrifices,” is shown in the novel, through the many hardships heroes endure, the sacrifices they make, and the journey they take to reach their destiny.

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.

Furthermore, Coelho demonstrates the theme of balance through the Hero’s Journey Archetype to employ that one must oftentimes persevere through hardship and a deadly encounter utilizing the knowledge one received throughout a self-pursuit of knowledge and defy a seemingly impossible event. While in the desert learning from the Alchemist, Santiago and the Alchemist are captured, and Santiago must turn himself into the wind in order to survive. Eventually, Santiago’s new knowledge about alchemy guide him to overcome the greatest obstacle Santiago faced throughout his entire life. Santiago faces a hero-like transformation into the wind,

Characters from one story to another may have different names, but their characteristics are often repeated. Applying Archetypal Theory to a text allows readers to recognize universal symbols, motifs, and patterns that appear in literature, myths, dreams, oral traditions, songs, and religions. Archetypal critics believe certain images, characters, and character types recur in literature, and all plots and characters are based on common myths, images, dreams, fairy tales, and legends (Davidson). Common character types are revealed when applying Archetypal Theory to Julia Alvarez’s novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, helping readers understand each character’s motivations. Particularly, common character types of the rebel, the ruler, and

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.

A family of four murdered to death; slaughtered, a Renowned writer Truman Capote wanted to study this murder and write a book about it. Capote tends to use a lot of imagery conveying the town, “Holcomb, Kansas” which the family of four were massacred in. Vivid description was not the only thing that capote utilized, there were many more rhetorical devices as well. Starting off Capote views the town as lonely, not much to it, not really being an attractive town. The Clutter family murder was essentially the only thing that caused attention to the town.

Sancho only plays the part of squire in hopes of becoming wealthy and owning his own island. Quixote yearns to recreate this world he has long read of: chivalry, battles with giants and evil beings and the rescue of maidens. However, in a more realistic sense, Don Quixote deals with windmills, bedclothes, and injustices. While Don Quixote represents illusion and imagination, Sancho Panza represents reality. They complement each other in a dualistic way. They foil each other in such a way that they might be seen as two halves of a whole. They represent a person who needs to have imagination whilst living in reality, because too much reality is destructive for any one man to deal with. However, their relationship, which is a combination of idealism and realism, affects each other in a negative way, in terms of the things they stand

As his mental state worsens, he transforms himself into a knight and fights with the imaginary enemies and abandons his niece and household to search for fictitious adventures. Don Quixote’s obsession with his books leads him to the point where he loses his mind and finds an escape in the fictional chivalry. Don Quixote shows participatory responses in the following scenes where he re-plots the ordinary events to fit his fictional adventures. For example, he fights with windmills while seeing them as giants. When Sancho tells him that they are windmills, Don Quixote persuades him that it is enchanter who turned them into the mills. Moreover, Don Quixote sees an ordinary peasant woman as a noble lady and calls her Dulcinea del Toboso and vows to fight for her honor. His immersion into Don Quixote is seen during his imaginary battle with muleteers, where he fights according to the code of chivalry that he read in his

“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).

It establishes Don Quixote as mad, and gives readers and characters around him insight into the way he chooses to perceive the world. Beyond manifesting as a way to uphold Don Quixote’s chivalric code and serving as an instrument to reflect unreliable narration, perhaps there is a function of delusions that transcends and melds from the two described. is this: Tthere may be a slight beauty in utilising a defective narrative and a metalepsis to describe a lopsided story, of a hunter in his mid-fifties who pertinaciously chose to pursue his passions, and of a knight with a broken helmet that persists to consciously live in his own

The Ingenious Gentleman, Don Quixote de la Mancha was written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605. He was eighty-five years old. The book quickly gained esteem, and as Cervantes jokingly predicted in Part II Chapter III, “In short, I feel certain that there will soon not be a nation that does not know it or a language into which it has not been translated.” Since Cervantes died within six months of the completion of his novel, he didn’t get to see his “prediction” come to fruition in his lifetime, though recently The Guardian reported that Don Quixote has been voted the best novel of all time in a poll of 100 of the most highly regarded modern authors (2002). With this in mind, Don Quixote really is a “must read;” Cervantes’s biographer, Aubrey

The changes include the transfer of school, moving to United States of America, the cultural invasion of another country. I think Carlos suffers from nostalgic about the person he used to be, “Who could feel nostalgic for the horror (117)?” I think he is nostalgic because his personality changed because Mexico or Mariana “came to an end just like the records of his jukebox (117).” Even his dressing style changed for Carlos, once in the battles of the desert during his teenage, now in a white suit, very incongruent(116). Also, what made Carlos change his personality is the perspective of the circumstances of many people like Harry’s, and Rosales’ house; Harry, and Rosales are two individual with different economical opportunities. What made Carlos change more is the belief he has “However high the heavens or the skies, / however deep the ocean lies (81).” To me the belief of Carlos meant that he is willing to do anything for something he wants putting himself in different situations, including the changes of his personality.

Don Quixote lives in a world entirely of his imagination. His mind creates explanations for the many real-world situations that challenge his alternate reality. He believes himself a courtly knight, on quests of honor and justice. In one instance, Quixote comes to a field of windmills, but in need of a new adventure, tells his squire, “you see there before you, friend Sancho Panza, some thirty or more lawless giants with whom I mean to do battle” (Cervantes 413). Looking to secure justice for those under his protection, Quixote demands the release of a group of slaves being

In the story Pierre Menard presents two options how he could write his Quixote. The first option is that he, Pierre Menard, will become Cervantes, in that way that he will learn to speak 17th century Spanish, he will learn the history and examine the circumstances that were surrounding Cervantes while he was writing his Quixote. Of course, this option is denied as impossible (ironically, Borges says it too easy.)