Don Quijote Analysis

From the town fool to mental asylums, the subject of madness has always been a topic of great interest by the majority throughout history. Regardless of the long history of attention, even now with a diagnosing manual, “madness” is still complicated to define and often met with problems with reliability. However, one single definition of madness holds stagnant across time: those different from the rest. In both Don Quijote by Miguel Cervantes and Rameau’s Nephew by Denis Diderot, this idea of the “mad” as the unusual is clearly shown through the respectively divergent two main characters. Through the individual representations of the multifarious shades of madness, Cervantes and Diderot are able to bring forth similar tools of character attachment

It should be noted that his inaccurate view of reality, though mildly problematic at times, is not as completely negative as the connotation holds. Rather, this altered view draws a rather fantastical view of life for Don Quijote as everything he sees has relations with the knight-errantry. He sees a barber’s basin as a helmet, and is able to interpret most of his misfortunes as a result of an enchanter. For Rameau’s Nephew, Him’s madness is mostly characteristic of unconventional thoughts. He does not necessarily align to expected social norms, and lives his life according to his own needs. Regardless of the types of differences they hold, the two are still forced under the nebulous category of the mad because of the fact that they are simply just different. Me describes Rameau’s nephew as “one of the most bizarre characters,” and Don Quijote is constantly called mad throughout the book through passing minor characters. The descriptions mean dissimilar ideas but come to same idea: strange and different. From the views of others in the books, the two characters are indeed strange, as they commit to behaviors out of the ordinary. Rameau’s nephew starts to put on a performance in the coffee shop, and