After this semester is done, I will remember Don Quixote in a fairly positive way. Although he caused a lot problems for himself and others around him, he defiantly had good intentions with his actions. He might have gotten himself and Sancho in many unfortuate events, but you could still tell that he was trying to be a knight errant with good intentions.
One of the most memorable scenes in my opinion was the windmills episode. This was very memorable for me because it was the first time I really got to see Don Quixote’s real self. I saw how delusional Don Quixote really was right when he saw the windmills and said to Sancho, “Good fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have desired, for there you see, friend Sancho Panza, thirty or more enormous giants with whom I intend to do battle and whose lives I intend to take, and with the spoils we shall begin to grow rich, for this is righteous warfare, and it is a great service to God to remove so evil a breed from the face of the earth.”, p. 58. He was so sure of what he thought from the way he described what he was seeing, it shocked me. This is the first episode I think of when I think of Don Quixote as a novel.
Another episode that reaffirmed my judgement of Don Quixote was the magic wooden horse scene. This is when Don Quixote and Sancho climb onto a wooden horse told to them by the Duke and the Duchess that it was a magical horse that will take them to the heavens. Don Quixote was so gullible in this scene that when the others watching them started to blow at them, Don Quixote said, “There can be no doubt, Sancho, that we are approaching the second region of air where hail and snow are born in the third region; and if we continue to rise in this fashion, we shall soon come too the region of fire, and I do not know how to adjust the peg to keep us from going so high that we are burned.”. Sancho even believed it too after they put fire in front of them so that they felt heat on their faces. After they did this Sancho said the Don Quixote “By my soul, we must be in that place of fire already, or very close to it, because a good part of my beard has been singed, and I’m ready, Señor, to take off the blindfold and see where we are.”. Luckily Don Quixote convinced Sancho to keep on the blindfold or else he would have what was really going on.
I learned a lot from this class and it wasn’t all just about Don Quixote. I improved my writing skills, learned how to do proper research , and also how to manage my time outside of the class. I was not expecting Don Quixote to be such an enjoyable story.
