Good or Evil, they decide.

The art of story telling and be used for good or evil. In chapters 27-35 of Don Quixote, Cervantes uses the theme of story telling to essentially train the reader to question the validity of the story teller;  A very powerful tool, especially in the world we live in today.

Lucinda or the middle east?

Today, there are hundreds of news sources spinning the same the story hundreds of different ways. Cervantes does the same thing. He uses serval different viewpoints of characters in these intermingled stories in order to keep us guessing. Now if we swap out who loves Lucinda to the happenings in the middle east, the picture starts to get a little clearer. Today, a liberal news station can spin the story to avoid war while a conservative news station can spin the story to try to convince us to go to war. At the end of the day we are left confused.

Cervantes training 101

Cervantes is also training us to question our story tellers and ask ourselves what the purpose of the story being told at all. he does this With the situation of Sancho and the letter to Dulcinia. Although we know the whole thing is a ploy don Quixote is left in the dark. This is like us. The power lies in the hands of the story teller. So essentially the news outlets are Sancho and the people consuming the news are don Quixote;Left in the dark.

Blurred lines

Cervantes toys with the idea of reality and fantasy to show how easily the lines can be blurred. He incorporates these stories in his story and connects them with don Quixote, a “real life” character. As readers we start to question what’s real and what’s fake; which is exactly what Cervantes wants. It truly is amazing how Cervantes had such a foresight for how the world would be today. It also makes me question the conditions of Spain for Cervantes to be so cynical in his writing.

True or False

Cervantes most cynical moment come in chapter 32 when the burning of the books is being discussed. The innkeeper states, “Here you are trying to make me believe what happens in these good books is nothing more than nonsense and lies, (which it is), when they are printed with the license of the Royal Council- as if those people would permit a bundle of lies to be printed with so many battles and enchantments, enough to drive you mad!” (298). Which is basically saying, “if the government publishes it, it must be true!” A statement that would make any cynic’s skin crawl. This quote is essentially put on a spoon and fed to even Cervantes dumbest audience- proving further that Cervantes simply wanted us to be careful and question everything.