Unrealistic Delusion Of Chivalry And Knight-Errantry By Don Quixote

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The fantasy world that Don Quixote rearranged his life around stemmed from the stories he read in his abundant collection of novels about chivalry and knight-errantry. Cervantes informs us that Don Quixote is the way he is because he spent so much of his time reading these novels that he neglected all other aspects of life. His mind was bombarded with chivalric stories to the point that they were basically the only thoughts he had left up there. Although all of this reading plagued Don Quixote’s mind with unrealistic delusions of knight errantry, it also made him a man of words. Towards the beginning of their journey Don Quixote and Sancho came across a group of goatherds. Don Quixote spoke with the enraged goatherds who were blaming the death of their friend Grisóstomo on the beautiful shepherdess Marcela for being too beautiful and consequently, making him love her, then not reciprocating the feeling. …show more content…
Several times he had to correct one of the goatherd’s use of vocabulary, eventually to the point that the goatherd demanded he stop, “’You mean Methuselah’ replied Don Quixote, unable to tolerate the goatherd’s confusion of words…Pedro responded, ‘and if Señor, you keep correcting every word I say, we won’t finish in a year’” (Grossman, pg. 83). Aside from his intellectual knowledge, Quixote also seemed to be more rational than the goatherds. With regards to the context of the conversation, he was much more in touch with taking the opinion of women into account, believing that his goal is to preserve the free will of women, while the other men were much more focused on their own desires. The goatherds may not play a large role over the span of this lengthy novel; however, they do show Don Quixote in a positive light. The foolishness of these men in believing that Marcela killed their friend is emphasized by the more reasonable beliefs of Don

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