The Interaction Between Don Quixote And Sancho Panza

Don Quixote is about a man who spends his life reading fictions, which contain heroes and knights who help the helpless and are not afraid of adventures. This novel is claimed to be “one of the best-selling novels in world, and it is believed that Don Quixote is the very first novel of modern writing which created a new path of writing in Spain and around the world”. This book was a great success for the writer and Spain since the day it was published; it has crossed all the boundaries of cultures and languages. Criticisms and perceptions in many languages have been published on Don Quixote since the day it was out for reader until now the 21st century.

Alonso Quixano is the main character of this book; in addition, he comes up with a new name for himself which is Don Quixote. One day he decides to be a knight and take adventures in order to help people. He hopes that someday people read his name as the courageous knight like how he reads all those names in his books. Intense reading makes Don Quixote mad, and he is in a stage in his life that he cannot separate the real life around him from the fantasy he has made up in his mind. He claims that “he is in battle with the giants.” Giants are Don’s fictitious enemies in the novel, and he has to get rid of them to achieve his dream.

Alonso Quixano is a middle aged man, around fifty, from La Mancha, Spain. He wants to make himself into a character of a knight, a man who is honored by the public, and the one who is remembered as noble and brave. He wants to make his fictitious character a reality, and he becomes mad when he wants to live like the heroes in the books he has read. He leaves his home wearing an old armor in quest of his dream. He wants to find his dream lady, a Spanish country girl named Aldonza Lorenzo who he has named Dulcinea del Toboso. He drags Sancho Panza, a farmer living nearby him, to be with him in his adventure, and in return Don Quixote tells Sancho that he can make him a governor after they success in their adventure against the giants.

Don Quixote’s personality becomes very complex that he loses the ability to differentiate between the illusions he had and the real world he lives in. In the first book of the series, he sees windmills as giants, inns as castles, and prostitutes as princesses. (Don Quixote, Ch.8) He is fully controlled by his fantasy and imaginations that he would not listen to his servant or anyone else telling him the real events happening around him. On the other hand, in the later book of the series, Don Quixote has a character based on the first book. His personality is not under his own control because he no longer lives up to his fantasy but to people’s fantasy.

Based on the novel, when Quixote sees wind-mills he visions them as giants and starts attacking them even though his companion, Sancho, makes him aware that there are no giants and only windmills are visible from them. Don refuses to believe his servant, and he is sure that he sees giants; therefore he goes closer and closer to them until he realizes that his servant is right. Even though Quixote realizes the truth, he does not admit it, and he believes that magic has changed everything in his honor. (Don Quixote, Ch.8) His delusion makes Don to refuse reality and never doubt that he is wrong when is actually seen the windmills with his eyes. His ignorance of the truth around him and the impact of his delusion have controlled his vision and thinking and have left him to live in his imaginative world.

Part II of this story is changing like how Don’s fantasy is changing, and it is turning a part as the story goes on. Reality is rising up in his imaginative world, and he starts to doubt his views. He is beginning to see the reality around him, and in one point he sees inns as inns not castles; also, he realizes that the peasant girl to whom he is falling is a normal peasant girl not the princess he has portrayed.

“For what I want of Dulcinea del Toboso she is as good as the greatest princess in the land. For not all those poets who praise ladies under names which they choose so freely, really have such mistresses. . . .I am quite satisfied . . . to imagine and believe that the good Aldonza Lorenzo is so lovely and virtuous.” (Don Quixote, Ch.25) From this quote of the first part, Don explains to his servant that the real characteristic of the lady he is falling for is not important for him because he has already portrayed his ideal characteristic of her in his imagination. The real face of Dulcinea is not available for readers because throughout the novel, she is only seen via Don’s imaginative figure. His imagination and fantasy have created an ideal figure for her that takes place of reality