Don Quixote: Characters, Style, Themes, and Influence on Modern Novels
Don Quixote: Characters
The duo formed by the nobleman Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, form the backbone of the plot.
Don Quixote
- A gentleman who has lost his sanity from reading too many books.
- Embodies the ideal and fantastic world of chivalry.
- Driven by two ideals: restoring justice in the world and his love for his lady.
- Seeks fantastic solutions to any situation, inspired by the books he has read.
Sancho Panza
- A tough farmer.
- Represents everyday reality.
- Only trusts what he sees and is concerned with immediate matters.
- Acts out of material interests: profit and the governorship of an island.
- Relies on popular wisdom and proverbs for support.
These two worldviews represent, in essence, the duality of the human soul. Cervantes masterfully blends the personalities of both characters throughout the work. Don Quixote gradually recovers his sanity, while Sancho is drawn into the fantasy and delusion of governing an island. This progressive exchange of roles is known as the Sanchification of Don Quixote and the Quixotization of Sancho.
The other characters in the novel provide a setting of the time, reflecting all social classes and strata. This chorus, composed of dozens of characters, serves an important narrative function: to offer the two central characters the opportunity for adventure and to manifest themselves as they are. Among them are Bachelor Samson Carrasco and Dulcinea of Toboso.
Resources and Style
The style of Don Quixote responds to Renaissance ideals of simplicity and naturalness. Cervantes uses decorum, adapting the language to the cultural level of the characters. Sancho’s speech is popular, while Don Quixote’s embodies a more cultured level.
Don Quixote introduces numerous narrative techniques that quickly join the literary tradition:
- Dialogues: Although Cervantes is not original in this, the use of dialogue is one of the great discoveries of the novel.
- Subplots: Especially in the first part, Cervantes weaves the main story with a multitude of adjacent plots that supplement the first, host a reading, and make it more varied.
- Recap: Every so often, the narrator summarizes developments so that the reader does not lose track of the story.
- Contrast: Cervantes chooses to create counterpoints between characters and conflicts, especially to offer various viewpoints.
- Humor: Present throughout the novel. Cervantes laughs at the follies of his characters, although he also pities them.
Themes and Intention of the Work
The parody of chivalric romances, as the author himself makes clear, is one of the themes of the play. But the greatness of Don Quixote lies in its ability to recreate the great conflicts of the human being, such as the struggle between ideal and reality. Knight and squire represent two visions of the world: the idealistic and the pragmatic. Don Quixote symbolizes the world of high ideals, while Sancho embodies common sense and everyday reality. Both forces are in tension throughout the play and represent the two sides that exist in every human being, hence its universality.
Don Quixote and the Modern Novel
With Don Quixote, Cervantes opens a new way of writing novels. The author understands narrative as a fictional genre in which real elements are incorporated, combining different genres and techniques to please and teach. The main features of the genre, thanks to Cervantes, are:
- Realism: The novel no longer reflects ideal worlds, far from everyday life, but reality itself. The novel is a fiction but based on social and human reality.
- Dynamic Characters: Characters are no longer static prototypes representing values. Now they are complex, contradictory, and evolve throughout the play, processed by experience.
- Perspectivism: The work offers no single point of view. The author presents some facts, and it is the reader who must draw their own conclusions: Don Quixote and Sancho do not see the same reality. Cervantes is confined to the conflict.
- Probability: The story is a fiction but presented as a reality. The novel does not need to fit a historical truth, but it must have verisimilitude. That is, the narrative must be credible, plausible: the novel is a fiction that could have been true.