Tag Archives: Sancho Panza

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Relating what will be seen there

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I’m sailing along into Book 2 of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote now. I see no reason to disagree with most critics, who think Book 2 is a little smoother and better-conceived than Book 1. The author has more control of his material, and has learned to exploit better the possibilities in his characters.

Sancho Panza, his squire, especially comes into his own. Sancho has always been smarter than his master, in matters of real life, and he’s learning to manipulate him (quite often for his own good).

The scenario at the start of Book 2 is that Don Quixote is resting, somewhat against his will, at home – but his family and friends perceive that he still longs to ride out and have adventures. A new character is introduced – “the bachelor Samson Carrasco.” (I find it amusing that the bachelor’s degree, which has become almost worthless nowadays, once carried enough prestige to function as a title, like “Doctor.”) The bachelor is a well-meaning young man, and he comes up with a clever plan to entrap Don Quixote in his own delusions and force him to give it a rest. Except his plan fails, leaving the old madman at liberty to ride forth to adventure again.

Sancho Panza is a little more successful operating along the same lines. When his master asks him to go to his fair lady “Dulcinea’s” village and find her for him, Sancho doesn’t know what to do, as he’s never actually seen the woman. He solves that problem by waylaying the first three peasant girls he sights riding along the road on asses. The inherent problems that none of the girls is at all beautiful, and that they have no idea what this old scarecrow in armor is talking about, are easily solved. Sancho simply talks Don Quixote’s own language to him – his perceptions, Sancho explains, have been confused by evil enchanters. The old knight is a sucker for evil enchanters.

As I read, I was struck more and more by the resemblance between Don Quixote and today’s Woke college graduates. They have both alike been driven mad through reading and believing insane books. I think it might be a good idea to study Sancho’s strategy, employing similar tactics to disarm the Woke. (The bachelor Samson Carrasco, perhaps because he’s a college graduate himself, was less fortunate in this strategy. Caution is in order.)

I also have to mention one of the actual laughs I experienced in my reading. Cervantes, in the style of his time, provides a long descriptive title to each chapter. But Chapter IX is entitled, “Wherein Is Related What Will Be Seen There.” That’s a nice, dry little gag.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Quixotic minds

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I feel a little like Don Quixote myself today, having taken a journey on Saturday and having come away feeling a bit as if I’d been tossed by windmills.

They held an all-school reunion in my home town this past weekend. Our high school’s history ran from 1915 to 1990, after which year the district was consolidated with that of a neighboring town. The reunion was for everyone who attended the old Kenyon High School (our team was called the Vikings, which shouldn’t surprise you at all). My class was not the most snowy-headed and venerable among those present, but we were well along in that direction. I saw many old friends and acquaintances, some of whom I’d not laid eyes on in almost 60 years.

Yikes!

I strolled with my brothers through the hallways of our old elementary school, which still exists serving its original function, subsequent additions having been built on in stages, pushing ever westward into what used to be our playground.

When I think about it, I realize that I have both good and bad memories of the place. But it’s the bad ones that come to mind when I’m just flipping through the negatives. We discussed the nature of memory, how every time you remember a thing, you overwrite it, as in RAM. Thus, the more often you remember an event, the more unreliable its memory becomes. Do I really have any idea what happened to me?

Don Quixote, the first book of which I’ve now finished, presents a not entirely dissimilar problem. The old, crack-brained “knight” is certain of his perceptions, though no one else sees what he sees. This is no postmodern book, in which we’re supposed to wonder what the truth is. Cervantes is certain of what’s what – one of Don Quixote’s faults is that he refuses to submit to common reason. He’s a victim of pride, though insanity gives him some excuse.

When the curate and the barber, who come to bring him home, manage to lure him back to the inn where he’s suffered previous humiliations, we’re treated to fully three inserted subplots. In each of these episodes, lovers with sundered hearts are reunited through sheer coincidence. One could easily argue that stories like these are fully as fanciful as the Chivalric Romances Cervantes has already condemned. I suppose Cervantes might answer that, a) coincidences are a lot more plausible than the giants and wizards and flying horses of the chivalric stories, and b) such love stories are morally useful, as they assure lovers that God will intervene to bring them together if they only submit to proper social and religious strictures. (If readers who are lovers are disappointed in this expectation, they’ll at least have been kept from sin.)

Don Quixote is a sinner too, if an amusing one. His humiliations are the fruits of pride, and the same goes for those of Sancho Panza, who’s willing to become a blind man led by the blind, in his ambition to be governor of an island.