Don Quixote Criminal Analysis

The idea that an insane offender is not liable to be punished under the criminal law is stated surprisingly often in this text. Early on, in Chapter III of Book I, Don Quixote has gone to an inn that he takes to be a castle. The innkeeper, whom Don Quixote thinks is the castellan, is amused by Don Quixote’s lunacy and hopeful that he might make money out of him. The innkeeper goes along with Don Quixote’s delusions and promises to dub him a knight. He garners interest in Don Quixote among the towns-folk by informing them of his fantastic form of madness. As a result, many people come to watch Don Quixote standing on guard of the rusty armor that belonged to his great-grandfather which he has placed on a trough for safekeeping. A man of the inn enters the yard and moves Don Quixote’s armor so as to water his horses at the trough. Don Quixote reels at what he takes to be the man’s aggression and begins to attack him in self-defense and defense of his armor: “... he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a blow on the carrier’s head that he stretched him on the ground” (Cervantes, p. 31). …show more content…
One that does not take at face value Don Quixote’s own despair at having spent so much of his life in a delusional state. Of course, it may be impossible to read Don Quixote with too much irony. Cervantes is constantly playing with meaning and satire, but one misses something important about the pathos of the book’s ending if one does not take seriously and without irony, Don Quixote’s sadness and sense of humiliation on his deathbed. Don Quixote’s delusions of himself as a knight-errant are lifted at the same time as he becomes mortally ill with a fever. He regrets his delusional life. He is humiliated by having been trapped in psychosis for so long and is profoundly embarrassed by the realization that others have been humoring him. Don Quixote