Warning! If you haven't finished Don Quixote don't read this post until you do. It is important to read the book and formulate your own opinion first.
I have several concerns with Don Quixote. The side stories are my biggest question with this book. The style of the book and the plot. The premise seemed so promising but in the end I feel it fell flat. Lastly the sexism and racism is a concern for me.
On a pragmatic level I understand the reason Cervantes had so many diversions. Cervantes was not very successful and Don Quixote was sold as a series. It creates a disjointed feel. In the second half the central characters weren't even the same, Sancho was more intelligent and Don Quixote was less insane. The side characters had disappeared and we had new ones, the graduate and the Duke and Duchess. Things really went down hill for me when the Duke and Duchess entered into it. At first it was funny, that he was famous and that they set up some adventures for him. But they took it too far, especially when they were laughing at Teresa, Sancho's wife, she wasn't a part of it, that made me mad. And when they drag Don Quixote back and present a 'dead' Altisidora who is raised by pinching and poking Sancho (and that's another thing why are they so interesting in flagellating Sancho?) you have to wonder don't these people have better things to do? Then I thought that perhaps Cervantes was trying to make a point about the spoiled bored upper-classes and then I connected it back to Dorotea and Don Fernando. That was an annoying side story. Boy what a relief when he marries Dorotea and we know she can look forward to a long life with him cheating on her. This isn't the promised meaning of the book but it is something to connect the stories. However there are many other stories and what about them?
Cervantes invented the novel but it has been greatly improved upon since then. Supposedly written by two different people who interject often, while interesting because it is so unusual, every time the translators showed up I felt assured that the style for less obvious narrators is superior. I understand a lot of that is a satyr of another work but as a modern reader it makes it disjointed and takes me out of the story. I imagine it did back then as well but it was more accepted by people in on the joke. While reading the section on poetry in The Well-Trained mind Susan Wise Bauer tells us that poetry was delivered orally and mostly on the spot. To help the poet remember the story they used formulas, the Hero is away from home, there is a great battle, the loss of a friend, struggle for return,...you can see that there is that formula in Don Quixote. Poetry was the first way of relating these stories so of course it would be the most familiar method for Cervantes. Ms. Wise Bauer writes: “Other memory aids shape the epics as well: The poet often began with an oral “table of contents,” a prologue that outlined what he was about to do...and halted occasionally to recap the action, to remind himself of where he had been before he proceeded on.” Sound like Don Quixote? So the epic poems that preceded him is a good place to start understanding him. It's a good thing The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer are next.
The case of accused rape that Sancho judges which Cervantes meant to show Sancho's homely and surprising wisdom showed me something different. It was (and still is) the attitude that a woman cannot be raped but that at the last moment she had to acquiesce. From there people felt that the woman had brought it upon herself. The attitude toward the Moors is unsurprising considering the time and place but just how much of these kinds of attitudes are forgivable and understandable? It is hard to answer that because as much as we would like to believe we would have been intelligent and feeling and progressive enough not to be that way we simply cannot know. Our society and how we were raised plays a lot more into our attitudes than we would like to admit to ourselves. The fact is we have opinions that will melt with time as our grandchildren will show us. I liked that sanity returned to Don Quixote but I was also dissatisfied with the ending. I thought it would have been funny and more suited had they stumbled into exactly what they sought just as they stumbled into their adventures. If it had ended the way of Don Quixote's knight errant stories with Sancho proving better at being a governor than had been expected and being allowed to keep his post and with our knight winning the hand of his fair lady. If the real Dulcinea, Aldonsa Lorenzo, had figured “Hey sure he's a rich Hidalgo I'll marry him.” When Don Quixote regains his senses before he dies I'm actually disappointed. For me the fun is that he has his adventures and is a knight errant despite everything. No matter what happens or what anyone says he explains it away and enjoys himself. That is what makes me root for him and when he realizes the insanity of it all he losses that, the whole point of the adventures, of the bumps and bruises. He realizes he is a laughing stock and everything he has wasted and lost. It's not that I believe ignorance is bliss but when so much has been sacrificed to maintain that ignorance it is sad when it is lost.
Altogether I really enjoyed the book, which is what it all comes down to any way, no matter how genius a book is supposed to be (which is still up in the air as far as I'm concerned) it should be enjoyable. It was funny, even if a lot of the jokes are four hundred years old and are lost on me. It was a fun and interesting concept. The stories were entertaining if questionable why they were there. I can see why it has endured and inspired for so long. I am looking forward to expanding my reading of Don Quixote and deepening my understanding of Cervantes. The plot is thin, very little actually happens, there is no transformation or awakening, which leaves me wondering why I came along for the ride in the first place. It is the first novel so it deserves its place on our list but it's clunky and unrefined.
Doctoral dissertations could be written about this book (and probably have) but this was my first reading which Ms. Wise Bauer calls the grammar stage reading. I am now acquainted with Don Quixote but we have yet to make friends.
