Don Quixote Insanity

“The human mind is not a terribly logical or consistent place.” We live in an age in which there have been significant technological advances. Yet, even with all of the knowledge we now possess about the brain, human physiology, and psychology, we still do not significantly understand how the human mind works. It is a complex and mysterious place which is inaccessible by others, and sometimes to ourselves. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, tells the story of a 50-year old gentleman whose readings have led him to abandon his modest living in order to pursue the profession of knight errantry. The novel is set in the early 17th century, well beyond the time of knights. For this reason, Don Quixote is an anachronism. His mind is the most incomprehensible

Don Quixote knows he is a character in a fictional novel, but he is a real life person in the novel. Furthermore, as Part II progresses, we see characters in the book take advantage of having read Part I of Don Quixote. Unlike Don Quixote, the characters that have read Part I, like the Duke and the Duchess, are not insane and can tell reality from fiction (Brewer 366). Don Quixote’s madness blinds him and acts upon what he sees, even though it is wrong. For example, the scene with Master Pedro in which Don Quixote, “speaking and taking action, [he] unsheathed his sword, leaped next to the stage, and with swift and never before seen fury began to rain down blows on the crowd of Moorish puppets,” (Cervantes 632). Puppets. Don Quixote attacked a stage full of puppets, because he thought they were real. How can anyone belief such a lie, even Don Quixote? In his mind, Don Quixote saw an adventure in which to prove his valiant nature, but there were only puppets. In this moment of madness, his reasoning was not as lacking as it was flawed. Don Quixote presented enough reasons to act in such a way, but there were far from what reality was. The occurrence of this sort of behavior correlates well with the presence of characters who have read Part I. With characters who have not read it, Don Quixote is much more

Characters like Don Diego and Don Lorenzo cannot determine what the status of Don Quixote’s state of mind is. To Don Diego, Don Quixote seemed to be, “a sane man gone mad and a madman edging towards sanity,” (Cervantes 565). Those are two opposing ideas and that is why the presence of Don Quixote was met with such confusion. How could a man be both a sane man gone mad and a madman edging towards sanity? They can’t be. There has be something more to their actions than so simple an answer. Furthermore, Don Diego is troubled by the same things we see from Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s, “speech was coherent, elegant, and eloquent and his actions nonsensical, reckless and foolish,” (Cervantes 565). This ambivalence characterizes Don Quixote in both Parts I and II. What you get from Don Quixote is a mixed bag of adjectives that don’t fit together into one person. One thing that we do see though, is Don Quixote’s more realistic perception. In most of Part I, Don Quixote would be clearly perceived as a madman with very lucid moments. So far in Part II, Don Quixote’s ambivalent characterization is leaning more towards that of a lucid man with mad moments than a madman with lucid