Is Don Quixote Insane

Within the text of Don Quixote, the reader is first introduced to the protagonist at first as an old wealthy man whom spends his time reading chivalric tomes of knights and their brave adventures. At this point, it is quite obvious that he is quite old at this time and perhaps felt the need for adventure once again and perhaps this was his midlife crisis. So from reading all of these tomes, he dubs himself a knight and takes on the name, Don Quixote de la Mancha. He then decides that as this magnificent knight, he must go on a quest and find he long lost love and perform these courageous feats. However, he knows before he is able to go on this adventures he must be formally knighted. Don Quixote abandons all of the life he knew and sets out …show more content…
Nor is he truly a knight. He is simply sleep deprived. “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” (Cervantes) It has been clinically proven that lack of sleep can have detrimental effects on the mind and ones grip on reality. “Sleep deprivation can actually cause other symptoms that mimic mental illness, such as disorientation and paranoid thoughts.” (Sleep, Performance, and Public Safety) Because of the time Don Quixote has spent reading instead of sleeping, he will suffer short term and possible long term effects. “In the short term, a lack of adequate sleep can affect judgment, mood, ability to learn and retain information, and may increase the risk of serious accidents and injury.” (Healthy Sleep) Which makes his hallucinations, make a bit more sense. He just simply cannot process his surroundings and therefor makes very bad choices. “Sleep deprivation negatively impacts our mood, our ability to focus, and our ability to access higher-level cognitive functions.” (Sleep, Performance, and Public Safety) Because of all of these effects that Don Quixote is having to deal with, it explains why he is reacting to things the way that he is. When he fights the villagers in the inn, he is simply submitting to the sleep deprivation. He has a lapse in judgement and cannot see why fighting is a bad idea. His higher-level functions, like judgement, are not able to do their jobs because …show more content…
The great thing about modern day psychology is that it can be applied to things in the past and it can give the reader more insight to how the character was feeling and it gives more reason to why they do what they do. However no single analysis of Don Quixote’s character can adequately explain the split between his madness and his sanity due to his sleep deprivation. He remains a puzzle throughout the novel, a character with whom we may have difficulty identifying and sympathizing. We may see Don Quixote as coy and think that he really does know what is going on around him and that he merely chooses to ignore the world and the consequences of his disastrous actions. But after looking at the novel again, in regard to his mental health, we can see that if Don Quixote had spent more time sleeping it is very possible that the whole story never would have happened. All of the problems he faced in the story can be explained by psychology. He did not sleep enough so he suffered all of the effects of sleep deprivation. Decreased Performance and Alertness, Memory and Cognitive Impairment, Stress Relationships, Poor Quality of Life, Occupational Injury. And that is just in the short term. It can be debated that the fever that ended his life was because of the long term effects sleep deprivation has on the body and the