Don Quixote
The midlife crisis seems almost a cliche today: bored and disillusioned, an aging man drastically alters his life in a desperate attempt to find meaning. Certainly, Don Quixote seems to suffer from that very disorder (and perhaps dementia as well), yet his experience proves earth shattering not only for him, but to an entire society and world as well. Don Quixote's radicalism exists as an antigen that utterly ravages a world that thrives on order and convention. Creating, in tandem, a fantasy world and new positive values, Don Quixote's rejection of accepted social convention threatens the precarious existence of the sane and ordered "reality" of his fellow characters to such an extent that they must set out to shatter his illusions; some to restore sanity to the Knight and order to the world, and others to ridicule him and overthrow his
When pressed to defend his profession, Don Quixote invariably appeals to the ennobling effect of knighthood (Predmore, 104). Developing alongside the Manchegan's new world are new, positive, values. The virtues he extols are virtues that seem to be absent from the real world: freedom, generosity, serenity, penitence, and forgiveness. These virtues walk hand in hand with knighthood, and his insistence on living the life of a knight errant can be seen as nothing less than an insistence on living a virtuous life. "Although knowing, as I do know, the innumerable labors to which knight errantry is subject, I also know the infinite good that can be attained through it..." [II. 6]. By creating a new world, Don Quixote is able to create new values, and it is because of these values that his "madness" has an intrinsic worth. From the very out
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Approximate Word count = 569
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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