Don Quixote [Kindle Edition]

Note that the reviews shown here are for various different Kindle and physical book editions of Don Quixote. In particular, the Kindle edition I downloaded does NOT have a hyperlinked table of contents, even though one of the reviews here says it does -- that's a review of a different Kindle edition, but Amazon just jams all these different editions together for review purposes. The edition being reviewed is shown at the top of the review. I do not recommend this edition.

This is what it says it is: a public domain text with hypertext navigation that allows the user to easily move from the contents page to the individual chapters and sections. Most public domain texts are just Project Gutenberg texts rendered into the Kindle format. This text was carefully constructed to make navigation easy.

Don Quixote de la Mancha tells the story of the self-made knight-errant Don Quixote. Don Quixote takes on this long lost profession of being a roaming knight because of his love for the romantic novels, telling of the great deeds of chivalrous knights and their quests and trials. Don Quixote sets out as a knight-errant, abandoning his possessions in search of a quest provided by God by which he can assay himself as a knight. Unfortunately for Don Quixote, the times of knights and Chivalry is long at an end and few people know what he duty of a knight is.

Don Quixote meets Sancho, a poor farmer in his town, and makes him his squire, promising him riches and "governorship of some island, once [Don Quixote] has captured it from some other great knight". Sancho, although ignorant and gullible, does not suffer from Don Quixote's perversion of reality and so acts to show what is really going on. An example of this is in the rather comical scene where Don Quixote charges at three windmills believing them to be giants terrorizing a small farm. Don Quixote brandishes his lance and charges the "giants", all the while Sancho is yelling after his master trying to tell him of his error in his perception. Don Quixote's valiant charge is abruptly ended when one of the sails comes around and takes him of f the back of his horse, Roselante, and picked him up and threw him into the ground. Don Quixote, after being sorely beaten by these "giants" later informs Sancho that only he could see that they were giants because some enchanter had caused Sancho to see nothing but the windmills. This shows the comical genius in paring up a well spoken and intelligent madman with a gullible, simple-minded companion.

The satire of Don Quixote and Sancho show the world of the romantic knight contrasted against hard reality. The truth is only seen by Sancho who has not been diluted by the tales of knights and ladies as his master has. This allows for Sancho to keep reality separated from the fiction.

Don Quixote embraces the duties of a knight, living honorably and with the Chivalric Code as his only rule-book. He demonstrates how the world of chivalry fits into the modern world. His diluted mind is always seeing fantastical images of glory and splendor. He speaks to everyone as if they were nobles, worthy of honor and respect. Often times the people who he talks to, such as innkeepers who he thinks are castle owners, or harlots who he thinks are the fairest ladies, have never been treated with such respect or given such dignity. Don Quixote in such cases shows the innocence, or perhaps ignorance, by which the Chivalric Code tells him to live. He sees everyone as worthy of respect; even his enemies are viewed by him as just and worthy opponents. Don Quixote shows how everyone should view others, as the worthies of people possible. This glorious lack of judgment towards others, which characterizes a part of Don Quixote, is laughed at and mocked by the onlookers. Through this Cervantes shows how chivalry and true knighthood is shunned, condemned, and opposed by the society of Don Quixote. Cervantes does this in a work that is both thought-provoking, glorious, and ingeniously comical. Chervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha is an incredibly well-written, thought-provoking, interesting, and hilarious satire on the medieval mind and the chivalrous knight. Don Quixote de la Mancha is truly a masterpiece work of literature that is truly universal. One can read it as a storybook as a child as well as a deeply complex novel as an adult. Don Quixote de la Mancha is one of the greatest pieces of literature since the great Epics of the West.