La Mancha

The Essence of Falsehood and Fakery: How to Pull off a Hoax The ubiquitous presence of fakes is an undeniable truth. I mean technically. It sounds so pretentious to say that we are surrounded by fakes, as if they are lurking around every street, ready to snatch the wool and pull it over our eyes, but it’s inescapable to live without encountering at least one element of fraud somewhere. Films, novels, television, paintings magazine ads, magicians, technically are all forms of trickery, because…

Wow. The video, "The BBs of Wealth" sends the message of wealth inequality with the auditory symbol of BBs falling into a can. The wealthiest 1% of the population has an average of over 10 million dollars in net worth, the bottom half of the population, around 50 million households, have an average of 5 thousand dollars. That's $10,000,000 (1%) compared to $5,000 (50%). This video relates to the entire textbook. Inequalities caused by socio-economic status are the reason that social…

In Miguel Cervantes' The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, the main character is not a lonesome fellow. The Knight of Rueful Countenance is accompanied by a squire by the name of Sancho Panza. Sancho is from the same village as Don Quixote and lives near him. Sancho takes the job to assist Quixote on his travels with the incentive of governorship. The loyal squire and his impulsive master eventually become friends. The friendship is tested when antipodal attributes collide. These…

Iberian lynx The Iberian lynx is the most endangered feline species in the world. They usually have a litter size of about 3. Rarely do more than 2 kittens live. They can typically live for 13 year. They live in the Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands and Scrub of Portugal and Spain primarily. Their current population size is about 100-200 right now. I think that the Iberian lynx population is in trouble because of habitat loss and lack of food, illegal hunting and people driving recklessly and…

Through Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote de la Mancha, we witness a progression of historical and literary autonomy through the characters within these masterpieces. From Lysistrata’s determined female activist Lysistrata, to The Wife of Bath’s Tale manipulative and controversial housewife Alison, and Don Quixote de la Mancha’s imaginatively chivalrous knight errant Don Quixote, we can trace a thread of characters who…

The Divine Comedy is a long form poem that tells the story of Dante’s a journey through Hell, purgatory and Heaven. Its structure is significantly different from anything that had been written before it, like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Dante’s cosmology is highly ordered, it is divided into 9 main circles that correspond with the punishments for each sinner who is in that particular level. As Dante descends through hell, he comes upon sinners whose sins become increasingly hateful, spiteful,…

From 2002 until 2007, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) produced a popular reality television show in which a team of surgeons, dentists, personal trainers, make-up artists, hair stylists, and fashion advisors worked to alter a person’s looks in an attempt to transform the person’s life and ultimately make his or her dreams come true. The show was called Extreme Makeover. Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote is the story of an extreme makeover gone wrong. Though Alonso Quixano tries to…

The Comedia of Virginity: Mary and the Politics of Seventeenth-Century Spanish Theater was written by Mirzam C. Perez and published on October 15th 2012. This theater history book essentially discusses the important role that the character of the Virgin Mary had in 17th Century Spanish theater and politics. The author argues that there was much more to character of Mary than just her purity during this time. She argues that the Virgin Mary also represented something people could use to…

(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…

It is ironic how Don Quixote is looking so fervently for more responsibility, but he is actually leaving his tue responsibilities behind in doing so. In being the heroic knight, Don Quixote would be responsible for all of La Mancha, and possibly beyond, but he claims that adventure is freedom and a release of duty and obligation. Don Quixote believes that the “very essence of adventures” is to give up responsibility and let fate, or in this case an old horse, decide his future…