Don Quixote: Rhetoric Stage Reading

Do you sympathize with the characters? Which ones, and why?

Maybe the only one with whom I sympathize is Sancho Pança. I like him, a simple man, witty and humorous, loyal and….has abundant proverbs in his head to be poured upon us! I think for Don Quixote, to live a Christian life is just an idea; mere theory. When his quire was beaten (I forgot in which scene :D) Don Quixote ran away ‘till he was sure everything is safe for him to help Sancho. His action was not correlated with his principle. On the contrary, Sancho never hides the fact that he is a coward and hates physical battle, but in time of trouble, he left his precious Dapple and his own safety, and ran to save his master, who has caused him most of his ill-lucks. THAT is a true Christian!

What does the setting of the book tell you about the way human beings are shaped?

• In his frenzy, Don Quixote is carrying noble ideals to save the oppressed, but most of the people he meets cannot see it, they only see his absurd appearance and madness, and take him only as a madman. We are often deluded by appearances and our own ideas, and forget to delve deeper.
• Idea could perhaps be the most powerful tool to shape our civilization. It can bring us to the truth or deludes us to the false; only grab it literally without finding the truth would be very dangerous, for ourselves and for others.

Did the writer’s times affect him?

Very much! Because Cervantes wrote is mostly from his own experience, which showed us Spain in the early 17^th century era. Cervantes joined the Spanish army, and it is believed to be the source of his knight-errantry and chivalric idealism.

What exactly is the writer telling you?

I think Cervantes wanted to portray the decreasing idealism of knight-errantry principles he was facing at his era. Morality has been decreasing in the tumult of new era, and people have failed to keep the true Christian values.

In what sense is the book true?

Modernism, in any era or century, brings also moral corruption to a society as a side effect. And it is depicted in this satirical romance as well.

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Don Quixote: Logic Stage Reading

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Is this novel a “fable” or a “chronicle”?

Don Quixote is a complex work, it can be said to contain both fable and chronicle. Alonso Quixada lived in a real world, as well as his niece and housekeeper, the curate, the barber and Samson Carrasco the bachelor. So it seems to be a chronicle. However, in his transformation into the mad Knight Don Quixote, all his adventures with his Squire Sancho Pança and all other characters (during his madness), the story is switched into fable. So, I think Don Quixote is a fable which Cervantes ‘forced’ us to believe as a chronicle.

What does Don Quixote want? What is standing in his way? And what strategy does he pursue in order to overcome his block?

Don Quixote possesses real Christian quality, as he has an obsession to free the oppressed from their sorrows and troubles by entering the profession of knight-errantry, after having read (too) many books about it. He deludes himself to do what the books said, forces real objects to fit his fantasy, and therefore often meets failures and dangers. But, fails in finding reasonable cause, he takes them as being enchanted by magicians, and therefore he keeps fighting earnestly to fulfill his obsession.

Who is telling you this story?

I think it was told from the third-person objective, that is Cervantes’. He wrote Don Quixote as if it was a biography of the Knight.

What styles does the writer employ?

Complex—using complicated sentence (being written in 17th century)—and quite ornamental. Cervantes included a lot of verses and proverbs—thanks to Sancho—besides his great narrative style to describe the extravagant adventures.

Beginnings and endings

The book begins with introduction to Alonso Quixada’s quiet life in a rural village in La Mancha. But immediately after that his knight-errantry books poisoned him to his delusion. It reveals men’s helplessness against the power of ideas. The ending is a resolution; where Don Quixote is finally woken up from his madness and dies peacefully after confessing that men should not read books which have tendency to delude them. In it Cervantes wanted us to understand that we have choices, but also the power to make a good one.

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