Identity, Imagination and Don Quixote

By Adam D.A. Manning

The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (1547 to 1616), or as it is usually called, Don Quixote, has the remarkable distinction of being one of the first works recognised as that defining element of western literature, the novel.  That alone might make it worthy of consideration, but over the four centuries since its first publication, Don Quixote has often been celebrated as one of the best novels ever; that is, it is often regarded as one of the greatest literary works of all time.

Don Quixote is easy to summarise simply.  Alonso Quixano, a middle aged Spanish nobleman, leads a quiet and easy life, until unaccountably becoming obsessed with the world of chivalry from incessantly reading epic tales of heroic knights of former ages. These imaginary legends fill up his thoughts so much, they sunder his grasp on reality and inspire him to become a knight himself. He swears an oath to become Don Quixote, a worthy knight who will champion the causes of justice and honour.  

Setting forth, his old horse Rocinate becomes his mighty steed and later a local farmer, Sancho Panza, becomes his squire.  What follows is an epic, rolling itinerary of often comical adventures and mayhem as Don Quixote pursues his holy quest with a righteous but misguided vigour and passion.  

Alonso Quixano’s perception is entirely subordinated to his self-created character of Don Quixote and the world must fit into this new vision.  An early encounter demonstrating his radical, novel outlook takes place at an undistinguished inn, which Don Quixote takes to be an imposing castle.  The ladies of the night to be found there are, to him, noble ladies of the realm and his visit ends up in a violent struggle, which to him is an honourable battle in which he must take part as a champion of righteousness.  All are baffled by Don Quixote’s extraordinary behaviour, and the other denizens of the inn take him to be a mad man. This is the theme of the piece - the concept of the self-created individual, who acts in accordance with their own vision of reality, regardless of worldly dangers and the bewilderment of those around them.  

Sancho Panza plays a role in balancing both of his master’s characters.  Whereas Alonso Quixano seems like a dry academic obsessed by a world of books and Don Quixote the fanatical, idealistic knight of legend, Sancho Panza is an earthy, practical man who has little time for learning.  Sancho regularly points out the lunacy inherent in Don Quixote’s plans but then carries on with them nevertheless, which much later on seems due to love and loyalty for his friend. Don Quixote acts from a set of virtues based on the code of the knights of former ages; Sancho acts generally out of self-interest.  For all Sancho Panza’s worldliness though, at least compared to his master, he still falls for Don Quixote’s promises of wealth and noble titles.  The glittering lure of the literary legends that have bewitched his master can still enchant even the pragmatic would-be squire when it comes to tales of riches.

It is tempting to a modern reader to think of Don Quixote in terms of role models but the concept involved has a timeless appeal.  We may be familiar with people who are inspired by characters from TV and film such as Captain Kirk, Superman or Doctor Who or more broadly from the culture around us, possibly as an amalgamation of many cultural sources.  The appeal is in the idea of cutting away society’s assigned silhouette for each of us, of not accepting the limitations of the ordinary, mundane life that many feel has been preordained for them, but instead reaching for a fantastic world of feeling and excitement, possibly more real to the individual than reality itself.

Don Quixote seeks to throw off his colourless, entirely uneventful existence for a far more attractive, thrilling life of never ending danger and adventure.  It is important to note that Alonso Quixano should be content - but he is not.  He is not poor or lacking in personal resources.  Yet his heart yearns for much more.  The question that speaks to us is, why let the events and environment around you dictate so much of who you think you are?  Why not set out on your own destiny?  Has the road this far which you have travelled along, conforming in so many ways, taken you to where you wanted, where you hoped or dreamed?  If not, why take one more step along that path but instead set off for a new journey, completely of your own creation.

In Don Quixote, it is literature that provides the answer to these questions. By making the legends come to life, Don Quixote seeks control of every facet of his existence; most importantly his own sense of self, his own character, his very being. To himself, he is never more real then when he takes on the identity of a fictional character, created from his own imagination.  Throughout the pages of Don Quixote, reality is constantly at battle with or overridden by the protagonist’s imaginary world. The reader is left questioning whether there is a real world out there or whether, to some degree, we are constantly acting in accordance with a world that is created out of our imagination. 

An implicit element of Don Quixote’s vision is that the world must now conform to his ideals, no matter what cost, and that he will no longer submit or accede to it on grounds of mere necessity or practicality, for ease or comfort.  Although the act of self-creation is centred on himself as the protagonist of his own life’s play, by extension all the world takes its place within the structure provided by the taking on of his imaginary character.

We often think of the idea of literature affecting or even invading the real world as a postmodern, metafictional idea yet this is the central theme of Don Quixote.  This theme is developed ingeniously and comically in the second part, published around a decade after the first.  In Part two, Cervantes assumes that the reader has read, or is at least familiar with, the first part of the adventures and also a series of fraudulent adventures written about Don Quixote by another author.  Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and other characters accordingly comment on both the original part and these other fake adventures and the reader enjoys the characters discussing literature both biographical (at least in terms of the novel’s characters) and fictional about themselves. 

Literature and story-telling have such powerful roles in our lives, even without realising it, that it is difficult to not think of ourselves as characters in the ongoing play of our lives.  When we recount events that have happened, particularly the important emotional dramas that we undergo, these are often versed in terms of characters and motivations.  Not many of us will undergo a personal conceptualisation as radical and thorough going as Don Quixote, but most of us will have a concept of ourselves and the type of person we think we are or wish we were. 

We use this concept in trying to understand and decide what we think we should do or how to be, in part to have some confidence in ourselves in coping with life. This self-image might range in precision from a rough idea of how we expect we might behave in a social situation all the way to a sophisticated philosophy of what it means to be a human and the nature of ethics or morality. 

Some people are capable of describing what they think of themselves and their character in detail or with a surprising degree of pride or forcefulness, verging on almost the defensive.  If they were to set this out to their friends and family, they may be surprised how little correlation their description might have with those nearest to them.  You may not be Alonso Quixano dreaming up Don Quixote, but your concept of yourself may still be somewhat misplaced or even fictional, at least in comparison to the accounts others may provide, especially in the area of what you would like or wish your character or personality to be and how generally people think of us. 

Some part of our self-image is likely to have an element that derives from our own imagination, drawn in large part from the culture that we observe around us, especially when considering our highest aspirations and ideals for ourselves and the lives we lead.  Don Quixote is merely the most extreme case of how many of us really think of ourselves.

The once well known phrase of tilting at windmills illustrates these ideas.  In a famous scene, Don Quixote takes a set of windmills to be ferocious giants ransacking the land.  Lance in hand, he sets forth to vanquish them, with disastrous results.  An allegory for too much of our own behaviour, this scene speaks to us of wasted energy and action spent on seeking to achieve misguided and possibly unachievable goals which we only pursue for distorted, misplaced ideals or desires that, if we are truly honest, we often do not really possess.

A noteworthy aspect of Don Quixote, especially given the age in which it was written, is the role of religion.  There is no reason to think that Cervantes was anything but a sincere Catholic and throughout the novel Don Quixote regularly professes his faith.  Yet aside from Don Quixote’s imaginary world of enchanters, sorcerers, giants and monsters, nothing supernatural happens in it at all.  Whilst many of the characters profess to be religious, there is little that anyone does that has any particularly religious nature to it, aside from various ceremonial activities.  The fantastic imaginary world of Don Quixote aside, the real world that is depicted is very much Sancho Panza’s world of practical action, pain, suffering and greed. Despite Cervantes’ presumed faith, the reader cannot help noting a certain scepticism, as if religion is no more real than Don Quixote’s world of wizards and dragons.  Don Quixote’s imaginary world does not need the intervention of the genuinely supernatural to sustain it; only his passionate commitment is required.

As a valorous knight, Don Quixote often proclaims his undying yet chaste love for Dulcinea, an imaginary lady he ranks as equivalent to a princess.  Utterly unattainable, his eternally unrequited love is part of the noble code of a knight.  This pure, virginal adoration of a member of the female sex is somewhat at odds with the regular appearance of prostitutes in the text.  Also, many of the stories told in the pages of Don Quixote include the appearance of dazzlingly beautiful young ladies, occasionally nude with only their long hair, Lady Godiva-like, to cover their modesty.  Young handsome men contend for the favours of these beauties, leading to a usually satisfactory conclusion.  Whilst the titular character may restrain himself to an idealised vision of courtly love, that’s certainly not how the rest of the cast behave.  The gently titillating eroticism that flickers every now and then takes us further away from a religious outlook on the world. 

Although by the end, Alonso Quixano gives up on being Don Quixote, the reader cannot help admiring him for his mad quest and extraordinary escapades.  Despite the mayhem and the disasters, he has lost nothing by taking on the role of the brave knight instead of spending more months alone in his library with his dry books. We feel that his experiment has been a success.  The reader has also gained so much from reading his enjoyable, crazy and often funny adventures and is challenged to consider what they too might make of themselves, how they might create their own being purely as an act of the imagination.  

We may not wish to take this to the preposterous extreme of Don Quixote, but there is genuine inspiration to take up symbolic arms and challenge the world with what we believe.  The genius of Cervantes is that his book is often given to children to read as an enjoyable and comical adventure whilst at the same time, other older readers think of it in profound terms as a guide to life, a Bible almost, that they treasure.    

Don Quixote can have even greater resonance in our present age, in which we are often viewed as mere consumers, our only genuinely creative influence being the provision of data about our choices in the goods and services we consume which feed algorithms which provide advertising to us. As our role as personalities degrades to the binary, flat abstractions of the digital world, Don Quixote and his wilful self-creation, of the creation of his own world, shines as a guiding light, intense with his determination and urgency to act.