Reality and Illusion as the Two Extremes of a Human Life - Essay Example

Reality and Illusion – The Two Extremes of a Human Life The study is focusing on a novel written byMiguel De Cervantes; published in the 2nd edition of Don Quixote printed during the year of 1615. It is consider as a significant influential piece of work of that era from a Spanish writer. The story is about a man who reads too many chivalric novels and considers him a famous person of knighthood (Cervantes 391). Don Quixote laid the foundation of modern western literature and introduced new forms of narration, methods, terms, and styles. Don Quixote highlights the personal honour in such a way that it enhances the growth and humanity. Moreover, in “divine and human justice” and thus, accepted his life as it was meant to be (Damrosch and Pike 1574). The objective of the analysis is to highlight that difference between reality and illusion of a life of Don Quixote/Don Quijote. The truths of the society are the bitterest realities of life. Every struggling individual undergoes a dramatic experience where a shocked wave moves the internal character of a person. The imagery power of an average human being is presented in the Don Quixote. Don Quixote brings itself huge dwells of tales, sketch, and occurrence. It was a major hit of its time reaching the novelty containing the “conventional combinations of elements”. A being from Mancha, fond of reading and imagination moved beyond the safe limits and assumed himself as a soldier with a horse and a lady for admiration. He called himself Don Quixote instead of his real name Quijada and aims to go to all parts of the world exploring the unknown in a warrior’s outfit and with armors of its great-grand father. Highlighting the romances of chivalry (Cervantes 384) made it formulaic. Don Quixote was ready to “do the most famous deeds of chivalry that have been witnessed, are to be witnessed and shall be witnessed in this world.” (Damrosch and Pike 1575). The fun made by others of the concept certainly failed to displace the courage and Don Quixote appeared containing the realities of life as being the child of the author. Yet love and romance is a source of service and the lady of Don Quixote was unreachable being nonexistent. Soon the armored person initiated an unplanned journey while going towards the destiny, which is accompanied by Rocinante (Cervantes 394). Highly inspired by the fiction novels, Don Quixote set himself out as knight, initially the journey was adventurous and he was able to match the imagination and the reality. Later on, he was assuming everything around him as part of his books and certainly he forgets about the real world around him. “The sun came up so swiftly and with so much heat” (Cervantes 396), whereas Don Quixote was riding with full energy and enjoying the beautiful scenery exactly like his books has stated. “When he caught sight of the inn, in at once became a castle with its four turrets and its pinnacles of gleaming silver” (Cervantes 396), as it entered, it was a small place with a very rough and rude man ruling the area. Don Quixote was totally away from reality and everything was looking bookish to him and making him joyful. In his imaginary castle he was served, a well cooked and delicious trout fish that he enjoyed eating it after a long day journey. In reality they offered him, “badly soaked and worse cooked codfish and a piece of bread as black and moldy as the suit of armor that he wore” (Cervantes 397). These incidents clearly depicts that Don Quixote was completely out of his mind and the people around him were noticing this factor in his personality. On his way forward, he stopped by a cultivated field and saw two people yelling at each other, after observing them he came to know that the person is not paying the worker, meanwhile Don Quixote shouted, “discourteous knight” (Cervantes 404), all the people were shocked around him as he called a farmer, a knight. In reality it was a big challenge for making the farmer pay money to the worker but as a knight, he felt it as easy as eating a trout fish. The unusual acts of the man were clearer now and opponents could easily figure out him as a madman. The moment he saw some people coming from a distance, he stopped and stood in the middle of the road and started screaming at them, the other party find it quite strange and started making fun of him by saying, “I beg your grace, in the name of all the princes here present” (Cervantes 407) and “we have never seen nor heard such a graceful knight” (Cervantes 407). These were the sentences from one of his fiction books that he recalled but in the actual place, that group of people came near him and started beating him and broke his ornaments and took away his armor as they felt threaten by him. This incident had psychically affected Don Quixote leaving him wandering the reason of beating him. In Don Quixote, the character that showed extreme concern in personal sense of honor was Don Quixote because it was his intense urge for attaining honor, nobility, glory and respect which set everything in motion. He considered chivalry as the perfect gateway for satisfying personal honor; thought highly of him and took pride in his quest. “I know who I am,” retorted Don Quixote, “I know that I may be all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the Nine Worthies, since my achievements surpass all that they have done all together” (Damrosch and Pike 1575). Whenever a human prefer his personal sense of honour to every other thing, he certainly reaches to a point where he forgets what is right and what is wrong. The significant line between the positive and the negative gets gloomy. Don Quixote was completely under the shadow of his personal honour, he merely forgets the normal being life. “he almost forgot about his hunting and even running his property, and his foolish curiosity reached such extremes that he sold acres of arable land to buy these books of chivalry” (Damrosch and Pike 1549). His fascination for chivalry context has gone so far that no other aspect of life comes under consideration. Sancho Panza, Duke, and Duchess are among the major characters of the narration. They were slaves to their desires and their ultimate desire is to be famous and honored. Sancho with an intention of getting a noble prize for his services to Don Quixote worked wholeheartedly, thus, it shows his thirst for fame and gaining a distinct position in the society. It depicts the worldly wants of beings that they forget to return to the Lord one day. An additional approach of life was obtained from The Duke and the Duchess; they blindly believed that by humiliating those who are lower than their status will escalate their personal honor. In quest of achieving this approach, they continued to make fun of Don Quixote and took him as a source of hilarity and laughter. Furthermore, the account of Camilla is elaborated. The beautiful lady about whom populace say that, “shall be able to say that… the virtuous woman of whom the sage says 'Who shall find her?' has fallen to my lot” (Cervantes 306). But the lady chose to stay in, “the society of rocks and brakes” over “that of any human being” because it permitted her to complain about her misfortune “to Heaven” since “there is none on earth to look to for counsel in doubt, comfort in sorrow” (Cervantes 258). Hence, the contrast between the personal honors of dissimilar natives is marvelously explained in the Don Quixote. The world of reality is different from that of imagination. The imaginary entity is in the hands of the beholder as they can mould it to whatever way they want. Whereas the real world is not under anyone’s power and nobody can suggest it what to do. The unpredictable nature of the real world becomes the cause of frustration for many people. Those like Don Quixote who have the courage to take initiative enjoy the happiness of fulfilling their dreams on their own while maximum number of people rest aside with a discouraged heart. The literature depicts the will power and the strong degree of imagination of a gentleman who liked him to be call as Don Quixote De La Mancha. He prefers this name as it contains the name of the place he belongs to, since it the style of the historical knights. The imagination of Don Quixote was strongest that enabled him to leave his family, work, and homeland behind and move into the world with a company of his horse for the betterment of deserving and poor people. He fantasizes a beautiful woman as a source of inspiration what he believes will work as a motivational factor in order to fulfil his dream of becoming a knight. “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have wished”, the positive attitude of the person stating it in the literature says that a person must work devotedly for his aims during the life but the fact cannot be deny that the end result is certainly based on the fortune of the person. The man realized that it is far good to stay in one’s imaginations and experience the feeling of gaining what a person has longed for. The real world is brutal and it certainly does not bend itself for anyone’s dreams to fulfil. A person has to work harder in order achieve his dreams whereas the result is usually disappointing. In the end, it is conclude that most of the characters of Don Quixote were kings of low self-control. In the quest of attaining social status and higher fame, they can do anything while forgetting that self-satisfaction is yet an important factor of the life of a human. Cervantes established the point that blindly adopting the ancestral norms that guaranteed nobility will lead to damage only. Cervantes presented lowly goatherds, ordinary people like inn-keepers and a mad man like Quixote as noble beings ready to fight for their honor and aristocrats like the Duke and Duchess as slaves of socially constructed norms having no respect for the actual spirit of honor. Women were not given respect the way, they should get. Hence, Don Quixote succeeded in presenting the cruel real faces of respectful creatures of the society. Cervantes worked harder to draw a line between honour and reputation as these two are mixing largely in the literature as well as real life. Works Cited Cervantes, Miguel de.Don Quixote.Interactive Media, 2012. Print. Damrosch, David, and David L Pike.The Longman Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition. Longman Publishing Group , 2007. Print. Read More