Laugh people, but perhaps
you will some day understand,
What is sublime and holy
In this miserable Don Quixote.
By the beginning of the XVII century, that is, by the time when the heroes of Cervantes lived, the Renaissance, with its faith in man and in its possibilities, was completed. Great ideas revealed complex contradictions. It became clear that the bold hopes and high tasks that the Renaissance posed to a man were not to be realized in real life. Passes naive conviction that only from the person depends on the performance of his appointment on earth. People cease to believe in the boundless possibilities of man.
In the novel of Cervantes “Don Quixote” and reflected this collapse of the ideals of the Renaissance, opposed reality and dreams, ideal and reality. The protagonist of the novel is a fifty-year-old hidalgo named “not that of Kehana, or the Quesada,” all of whose property was in a family spear,
an ancient shield, a skinny nag and a greyhound dog. After reading knightly novels and taking the name of Don Quixote of La Mancha, he goes in search of adventures, so that, like heroes of knightly novels, eradicate all kinds of injustice and injustice. But the reality does not correspond to the chivalrous notions of Don Quixote. He sees not a real, but an imaginary world. And real life destroys his plans. The gap between the idea of Don Quixote about life and life itself becomes the main theme of the novel by Cervantes. The courage of Don Quixote, his willingness to feat, thirst for justice, rejection of all evil do not benefit people. Most of those with whom Don Quixote meets do not need his heroism. Neither the convicts whom he freed, attacking the guard, nor the innkeeper, nor the shepherds need his feats, which he performs for them. “Senor Cavalier,” the innkeeper says to him, “I do not need your mercy to take revenge on my abusers… I only want one thing to be paid by your ladyship for the night.” – the owner of the inn comes to him. “I do not need your mercy to
avenge my abusers… I only want one thing – that your ladyship should pay me for the night.” – the owner of the inn comes to him. “I do not need your mercy to avenge my abusers… I only want one thing – that your ladyship should pay me for the night.”
Don Quixote is witnessing how a hefty villager is beating a shepherd. Having understood and found out that the boy was beaten for asking him to pay him a salary he had not received for nine months, the valiant hidalgo orders him to let go of the boy and makes the master swear that he will pay the shepherd dog in full. Delighted with his benevolence, Don Quixote went further, and the villager really “paid” the shepherd dog in full – so it trashed him that he barely survived.
Don Quixote, for whom loyalty to the word is the law, it does not occur to him that for a lot of people words, if they contradict their selfish interests, are an empty sound. He does not think about the results of his actions, it is important for him to remain true to his ideals.
After battles and skirmishes, countless failures and beatings, bloodied, defeated, Don Quixote still considers himself right. Cervantes created a hero whose words do not differ from the case. The people with whom the main character was reduced by fate, are used to the discrepancy between words and deed, ideal and reality. And Don Quixote is an integral man, does not know the discord between word and deed. The hero of Cervantes saw people of different estates – from the galleries to the viceroy of Barcelona. And everywhere he encounters lies, injustice, stupidity, stagnation. Its striking is not so much that people do not fight evil, but how much they do not have any need for it, have become accustomed to evil.
The defeat in the duel with the Knight of the White Moon, the appearance of a fake book about him, in which Don Quixote is depicted as an ordinary madman, and Sancho as a greedy glutton, all this casts the knight discouraged, deep disappointment in his soul. Don Quixote is defeated by the priest, barber, bachelor Samson Carrasco – practical people living with common sense. They can not be reconciled with a person living in a world of dream, ideal. They are convinced of their rightness and do not hesitate to resort to violence: they burn knightly novels that make up the library of Don Quixote.
It is difficult to argue with the ideological opponents of Don Quixote. But what is so poor and primitive their inhuman “rational” world! Common sense, practicality of Samson Carrasca and his associates causes our dislike, for the figure of the manatee of La Mancha and his squire Sancho Panse we feel sympathy, although we laugh at them.
In the end, before death, the mind of the Knight of the Sorrowful Image cleared up and he called himself no longer Don Quixote, but Alonso Kihano. He cursed the damned knightly novels that puzzled his mind, and died peacefully, as no wandering knight died. Sancho feels the real reason for the death of his master: “The greatest insanity on the part of a man is to take for no reason whatsoever and die when no one has killed you and no one has lived with the world except with only one anguish.” Don Quixote is dying of great anguish. But the novel of Cervantes does not leave a feeling of despair, we still have some kind of light feeling associated with the image of the Knight of the Sorrowful Image. The admiration for his unselfishness, his obsession with the idea of protecting the weak, his desire to transform life, the persistent following of the dream, the faithfulness of the lofty goal,