Cervantes Use Of Escapism In Don Quixote

During the life of Cervantes, Spain was a place of confusion, disparity and change. On the one hand, it was at the height of its European domination due to the huge influx of wealth provided by its American colonies, but on the other, it was suffering some of it’s most crippling defeats in its history such as the annihilation of its seemingly invincible Spanish armada in 1588. Therefore, during this somewhat chaotic time, popular literature was usually fanciful and used as a form of escapism from reality; predominantly chivalric romances about knights in shining armour, damsels in distress and practicing the code of knighthood (despite the Renaissance encouraging a new humanism in literature). Cervantes himself stated that he wrote Don Quixote …show more content…
A regularly bypassed symbol in the novel is the character of Don Quixote himself. Throughout the first 8 chapters, he is portrayed as patronising and arrogant with an inflated ego and as a man who sees himself as superior to others, especially Sancho. Some critics have interpreted this as a reflection of authorities such as the government and the monarchy at the time of Cervantes who preached, ordered and spoke out to the nation with confidence in their words, yet really knew very little (particularly concerning the Spanish Armada). In Chapter 8, Don Quixote’s dismissal of Sancho’s proposition that the figures in the distance are not giants but “molinos de viento […con] las aspas” shows his ignorance as a character as both Sancho and the reader know that he is wrong. We also learn that Quixote “no se dejó reir de la simplicidad de su escuerdo” which is extremely ironic as “su escuerdo” is actually the intellectual one of the two. Many readers and critics of the extract claim that this line alludes to the ignorance of Phillip II of Spain when he was adamant that the Armada was ‘invincible’ and ‘undefeatable’, despite being questioned by his subjects, yet was proven to be very