Why should you read Don Quixote Ilan Stavans
Mounting his skinny steed,
the protagonist of Don Quixote
charges an army of giants.
In his eyes, it is his duty
to vanquish these behemoths
in the name of his beloved lady, Dulcinea.
However, this act of valor is ill conceived.
As his squire Sancho Panza explains to him
time and again, these aren’t giants;
they are merely windmills.
Don Quixote is undeterred,
but his piercing lance
is soon caught in their sails.
Never discouraged,
the knight stands proudly, and becomes
even more convinced of his mission.
This sequence encapsulates
much of what is loved about Don Quixote,
the epic, illogical, and soulful tale of
Alonso Quijano,
who becomes the clumsy but valiant
Don Quixote of la Mancha, known as
the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.
Originally published in two volumes,
the narrative follows Don Quixote
as he travels through central and northern Spain
fighting the forces of evil.
Despite Don Quixote’s lofty imagination,
his creator, Miguel de Cervantes,
could never have imagined his book would
become the best-selling novel of all time.
Barring 5 years as a soldier,
and 5 more enslaved by pirates,
Cervantes spent most of his life
as a struggling poet and playwright.
It wasn’t until his late 50’s
that he published his greatest creation:
an epic satire of chivalry novels.
At this time,
medieval books chronicling the adventures
of knights and their moral code
dominated European culture.
While Cervantes was a fan,
he was weary of these repetitive tomes,
which focused more on listing heroic feats
than character development.
To challenge them, he wrote Don Quixote,
the story of a hidalgo, or idle nobleman,
who spends his days and nights
reading chivalry novels.
Driven mad by these stories,
he fashions himself a champion for the downtrodden.
Everyone in his village
tries to convince him to give up his lunacy,
going so far as to burn some of the
lurid books in his personal library.
But Don Quixote is unstoppable.
He dresses up in old shining armor,
mounts his skinny horse,
and leaves his village in search of glory.
Cervantes’ novel
unfolds as a collection of episodes
detailing the mishaps of the valiant knight.
Yet unlike the chivalry books
and perhaps all other prior fiction,
Cervantes’ story deeply investigates
the protagonist’s inner life.
Don Quixote matures as the narrative develops,
undergoing a noticeable transformation.
This literary revelation
has led many scholars to call Don Quixote
the first modern novel.
And this character development
doesn’t happen in isolation.
Early on, Don Quixote is joined
by a villager-turned-squire
named Sancho Panza.
Sancho and Don Quixote
are a study in opposites:
with one as the grounded realist
to the other’s idealism.
Their lively, evolving friendship is often credited
as the original hero and sidekick duo,
inspiring centuries of fictional partnerships.
Don Quixote was a huge success.
Numerous editions were published across Europe
in the seventeenth century.
Even in the Americas,
where the Church banned all novels
for being sinful distractions,
audiences were known to enjoy pirated editions.
The book was so well received that
readers clamored for more.
After a rival author attempted to cash in
on a fake follow-up, Cervantes released
the official sequel in response.
Now published alongside the first volume
as a completed text, this second volume picks up
where the original left off,
only now Don Quixote and Sancho have become folk heroes.
Just as in real-life, Cervantes included
his novel’s success in the world of his characters.
This unconventional meta-awareness
created philosophical complexity,
as the knight and his squire ponder
the meaning of their story.
Unfortunately, Cervantes had sold
the book’s publishing rights for very little.
He died rich in fame alone.
But his treatise on the power of creativity
and individualism has inspired
art,
literature,
popular culture,
and even political revolution.
Don Quixote argues
that our imagination greatly informs our actions,
making us capable of change,
and, indeed, making us human.