Don Quixote

A Spanish gentleman is growing old in his crumbling country villa. As he nears the age of 50, he complains that he has too much time on his hands. Rather than reading his favorite stories about chivalric knights and their fantastical adventures, he decides he will have an adventure of his own. He will become a knight errant, he decides, meaning he will become a knight who travels the world in search of people in need. After cleaning an old suit of armor and creating a helmet from cardboard, he goes to his elderly horse and gives it a new name, Rocinante, and he will be known as Don Quixote of La Mancha. Realizing that every knight needs a beautiful woman to whom they can dedicate their great deeds, he decides he will dedicate his successful adventures to a local peasant girl named Aldonza Lorenzo. Quixote has never met her, but he renames her Dulcinea del Toboso, giving her a suitable title as the object of his knightly affection.

A short time later, Quixote dresses in his armor and mounts Rocinante. He ventures out on his first adventure. Worried he is not officially a knight, he decides to discuss the issue with the first person he meets. Quixote imagines the stories that might be written about his imminent adventures. He describes the July morning in the same lofty, romantic language he remembers from the books he loves so much. After traveling all day, he arrives at an inn as the sun sets. In his mind, however, the unremarkable inn is transformed into a great castle. Two sex workers stand outside the inn, but Quixote sees them as royalty. He addresses them in his most formal, polite manner. They laugh uncontrollably.

The innkeeper appears and helps Quixote from his horse. The women remove Quixote’s tarnished armor, though he insists they leave his helmet on his head because he worries his homemade cardboard helmet will fall apart. Inside the inn, Quixote eats fish and stale bread. He needs the two women to place the food into his mouth because his hands are occupied with holding together his makeshift helmet. Despite the low quality of the food, Quixote imagines he has eaten a large, delicious meal. He ignores the laughter of the inn’s patrons. 

After his meal, Quixote asks the innkeeper to knight him. In Quixote’s mind, the innkeeper is a fellow knight. The innkeeper is confused but, intrigued by his strange customer, agrees to knight Quixote. After the ceremony, Quixote removes his armor and places it beside a well. He intends to stay up all night to maintain a vigil, as is tradition. A farmer and his mule pass by. When the farmer tries to move Quixote’s armor from the well, Quixote attacks him. He knocks the farmer unconscious with his lance and then fights off the man’s friends. As these friends throw rocks, the innkeeper steps in. He finishes the knighting ceremony and sends Quixote back out on the road in the early morning light.

Leaving the inn, Quixote decides to return to his house to change his clothes. He also decides he needs a squire to assist him. As he passes along a road, he hears someone moaning in pain. Investigating the sound, he discovers a farmer has tied a 15-year-old boy to a tree and is now whipping the boy. Quixote is horrified. He challenges the farmer to a duel. The farmer ignores the challenge. He claims he employs the boy as a shepherd, and the boy is being punished for failing to pay attention to his flock. Quixote does not care. He insists the farmer pay the boy whatever wages are owed. The farmer promises he will pay the boy at some point in the future. When the boy objects, insisting the farmer will simply continue whipping him as soon as Quixote leaves, Quixote happily assures the boy the farmer will keep his word. When Quixote mounts his horse and rides away, the farmer immediately begins whipping the boy again. He whips him harder than ever before.

Quixote rides away, ignorant of the boy’s pain and satisfied with the good deed he has performed. As he passes by, he mistakes a group of merchants for knights. Remembering the way in which knights acted in his favorite books, Quixote grabs his lance and insists the men agree with him that Dulcinea is the world’s most beautiful woman. The men are confused. They do not know Dulcinea. Quixote insists they acknowledge her beauty. The merchants joke that they would agree that even the world’s ugliest woman is the most beautiful if the alternative is to be attacked. The man’s joke only enrages Quixote, who lowers his lance and charges at the merchant. However, Rocinante loses his footing, and Quixote is thrown from his horse and feels pinned down by the weight of his armor. The men leave Quixote bruised and embarrassed on the side of the road. 

Still in pain, Quixote sits on the side of the road. He remembers passages from his favorite books to pass the time. He calls out to a passing farmer as though the man were Marquis de Manuta, a character from one of the fictional adventures. The farmer recognizes Quixote and tries to shake him free from his delusion about knights and adventures, pointing out that he is not the Marquis but simply named Pedro Alonso. Quixote dismisses Pedro’s claims and insists he will soon be recognized as a great knight. As the sun sets, Pedro escorts Quixote home. There, a priest named Pero Perez and a barber named Master Nicholas are waiting for him. They are Quixote’s friends, and they discuss his strange behavior with Quixote’s niece and his housekeeper, both of whom blame Quixote’s love of books for his recent delusions. As Pedro carries Quixote into bed, Quixote insists his wounds are the result of a fantastic fight against 10 giants. 

While Quixote sleeps in his bed, his guests examine his books. Quixote’s niece and his housekeeper believe the books should be sprinkled with holy water, but Pero Perez and Master Nicholas take their time to study each book, wondering whether the best solution is to burn the books to save Quixote from his literary fantasies. They separate the books into various categories based on author, subject, and style. They also select their favorite books. Eventually, they grow tired of sorting through the books and leave the remaining collection in a group marked “unknown,” agreeing these can be burned. 

Quixote wakes up and immediately begins shouting. He charges around his house with his sword drawn, announcing he is a knight named Reynald of Montalban. When he exhausts himself and returns to sleep, the housekeeper begins to burn the books selected by the priest for destruction. Meanwhile, Pero Perez and Master Nicholas agree to seal the remaining books in the library and tell Quixote a magician has placed a spell on the door.

Two days later, Quixote wakes up and discovers his beloved books are missing. His housekeeper tells him the story about the magician. Quixote swears revenge against the magician. Over the next 12 days, Quixote tries to convince Pero Perez and Master Nicholas to join him on an adventure. He also reaches out to a local farmer named Sancho Panza, encouraging the farmer to join him so he may be made a governor of an island in the future. Quixote gathers supplies and money to prepare for his next big adventure. Panza joins him as they leave the house in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. 

Quixote and Panza arrive in a field. In the distance, Quixote sees dozens of windmills. He convinces himself the windmills are giants. He lowers his lance and charges at the windmills but only succeeds in breaking his lance. After, he explains to Panza that the evil magician changed the giants into windmills as a trick. They ride away and Panza eats his dinner on horseback. Later, Quixote makes a new lance from a tree branch, and they sleep in a forest. The next morning, Quixote comes across two monks and a coach with a woman inside, assisted by her footmen and a Basque coachman. He decides the monks are kidnapping the woman, who is actually a princess. Quixote and Panza attack the monks. Panza is beaten when he tries to steal the robe from one monk while the other rides away. The Basque coachman attacks Quixote. The narrator of the story loses his place and assures the reader it will be found soon. 

The narrator pauses the story to contemplate the missing section of the narrative. The story, the narrator explains, is based on manuscripts that were found in Quixote’s library and in a market in the town of Toledo. The manuscripts found in Toledo completed the story but needed to be translated from Arabic. The narrator returns to the story just as Quixote faces off against the Basque coachman but notes this part of the text may have been exaggerated by the Arab storytellers. The coachman knocks Quixote’s armor from his body, slicing off a part of Quixote’s ear in the process. Quixote responds with a severe blow to the coachman’s head but, in a moment of mercy, agrees to spare the coachman’s life so long as the woman in the coach agreed to meet with Dulcinea to deliver her the story of his great victory.