Don Quixote had a unique journey, torn between ideals and reality. What is the message of his story? In this article, we’ll explore his life and lessons learned.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the phrase, “Why are you acting like Don Quixote?” It’s a phrase used to describe someone who does something crazy that makes no sense. It’s also said to someone who recklessly tries to do something that’s impossible. The semi-insane man who mistakes a windmill for a villainous giant is the image of Don Quixote. If you want to be labeled “normal” and get through life, you shouldn’t be like Don Quixote.
Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote is a novel about a semi-insane person. So, as you read the story, be surprised and amused by the wacky behavior of the main character, Don Quixote. It’s a fun read. You can be relieved and say, “Thank God I wouldn’t do something crazy like that. But there’s something wrong with that reading.
First of all, Cervantes has been known around the world for hundreds of years as the greatest writer Spain ever produced. His reputation will not be diminished in the years to come. Is that all? Some of the greatest writers of the 19th century we know, such as Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, confess to being influenced by Don Quixote. The list of 20th century writers who were influenced by him is equally long. Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, García Márquez, and many others. But that’s not all. “Don Quixote has inspired all kinds of art: theater, movies, opera, ballet, musicals, and more. It’s hard to imagine that such a light and enjoyable novel could have inspired so many writers and artists.
Let’s get back to the story. The main character, Don Quixote, is a semi-insane man. That is, he’s not completely insane. A rural Spanish nobleman in his fifties, Don Quixote lived a normal life, at least until then. And even in the novel, where he appears to us as a semi-insane man, he is normal in many ways. He’s intelligent, logical, and judgmental. Only when it comes to the story of a single knight does he become insane. What drives him crazy? He reads a book about chivalry and mistakes himself for the protagonist of the book. It’s not just a mistake. He tries to live the life of the protagonist. He tries to emulate the chivalry he reads about. But why does that make him a crazy person? Why is he labeled a madman for trying to emulate the great characters in chivalric novels?
As the world changes, so do people’s values. Don Quixote lived in a time of transition. We call it the Renaissance. Renaissance means “rebirth” in French. It means that times have changed completely. Simply put, the worldview was reversed from God-centered to human-centered. In the works you’ve probably already read by Homer, Vergil, Dante, Boccaccio, and others, the gods naturally appear. The gods control human destiny. Knights are the protagonists of the age of the gods. Chivalry was the most important value that people of that time valued.
But the world has changed. People began to think that our lives in front of us were more important than the invisible world of the gods. People have come to think that happiness in the here and now is more important than happiness in the next world after death. The chivalrous spirit of “treating gold like a stone” was replaced by the spirit of “worshiping gold like a god”. It became a world where practicality was more important than honor.
Even though times have changed, Don Quixote is still one of the most important people in the world for the lost spirit of chivalry. He is a man who still tries to realize that spirit. He is an anachronism. That’s why he’s considered a madman by others. But is he really a madman?
“Don Quixote was adapted into movies and musicals in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1965 musical The Man of La Mancha was a huge success, and a movie was made based on it. I love that musical and the movie. I also love the theme song, “Impossible Dream,” which I still hum to this day. In the musical, Cervantes becomes Don Quixote himself. And he brilliantly transforms Don Quixote into a man who dreams of the impossible, not a madman. It brilliantly shows that a madman is not really crazy, but someone who dreams of the impossible. I would like to add to that: the person who dreams of the impossible is the enterprising person who can change himself and the world! I am not making this up. Confucius said so long ago that a madman is an enterprising person. Don Quixote was not an anachronism; he didn’t just follow the times, but actively tried to realize the values he thought were important.
If you don’t just look at Don Quixote’s crazy behavior as amusing and feel a little sad, you’ve succeeded. If you went beyond sadness and felt affection for him, that’s even better. “You can be proud that you felt something similar to what the great writers who were inspired by Don Quixote felt.
You may be doing the same thing as Don Quixote when you read this book. In a world where many people say, “What good does it do to read books?” or “Isn’t it a waste of time to read novels?”, what are you if not Don Quixote? If you are criticized, say this.
“I read because I can’t live without dreams, because I want to change myself and the world, because I want to make myself and the world beautiful.”
“Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, the capital of Spain. His father was a doctor from an aristocratic family, but he was financially incompetent, and in 1551 he was imprisoned and had his entire estate seized for debt. The family moved from place to place, including Valladolid and Seville, and the family’s financial situation never improved.
Cervantes didn’t always aspire to be a writer; his first job was as a soldier. Enlisting at the age of 22, Cervantes served in a Spanish unit stationed in Venice, Italy. During his service, he was shot in the left hand during the famous Battle of Lepanto against the Ottoman Empire, but he continued to serve until he was 28 years old. In 1575, at the age of 28, Cervantes finally decided to retire from the army and headed back to his native Spain, but within days of setting sail, his ship was attacked by pirates, and he was taken prisoner to Algeria. The pirate demanded a ransom from Cervantes’ family.
The pirate demanded an enormous ransom that the poor Cervantes family could never afford. With no hope of outside help, Cervantes attempted to escape, but each of his four attempts failed, and each time he was forced to endure harsh punishment. His Spanish compatriots in Algeria paid the ransom, and Cervantes finally returned to Spain in 1580 after five years of captivity. In 1584, at the age of 37, he married 19-year-old Catalina de Salasar.
Cervantes’ attempts at public office were repeatedly thwarted. Desperate to make a living, he turned to his writing skills as a sociopath, writing and selling poems, plays, and novels. His first novel, La Galatea, published in 1585, was well received but did not bring him much fame. Cervantes became a low-level official and spent the next decade in the civil service. During his time in public service, he was imprisoned several times on trumped-up charges of corruption. It was in prison in the fall of 1597, when he was 50 years old, that he conceived of Don Quixote. The musical “The Man of La Mancha” is a synthesis of Cervantes’ actual biography and his work “Don Quixote”.
Cervantes published Don Quixote in 1605, when he was 57 years old, and it was a huge success. However, due to the hardships of his life, he sold the rights to a publisher and did not realize any financial gain. In his later years, he devoted himself to his religious life and entered a monastery, but he continued to write, publishing works such as A Collection of Model Novels (1613) and the second part of Don Quixote (1615). By the time he finally took his final vows as a friar, his dropsy had worsened and he was on his deathbed. On April 23, 1616, Cervantes died at the age of 69. Interestingly, on that very day, another great writer of the time, Shakespeare, also died.
