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A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

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Thursday, October 13, 2011

The funniest line in Don Quixote

Another great creation of Miguel de Cervantes in "Don Quixote": the sidekick. What would literature (or movies, or TV, or commercials?) be without the sidekick? It's almost as if he realized the need for Sancho Panza some chapters into the novel - he needed a naive but (somewhat) level-headed observer to give us perspective on Quixote's bizarre behavior and also to bring a bit of humanity and even sentimentality into the story: my mother was right - it is a very violent story, but the leavening presence of Sancho Panza makes the violence more palatable - he's so kind to Quixote, so sweet and touching. He also gets to say probably the funniest line Cervantes ever wrote: When Quixote looks up at the windmills and gives a rather lofty explanation as to how he's going to attack this legion of giants, Panza says simply: "What giants?" At that moment, he just begins to understand the true craziness of Quixote - after that point, he doesn't try to reason with or argue with Quixote, but just gently coaches him along and tries, in his fallible way, to keep Quixote in one piece and out of trouble. There's probably a lot to be said and a lot has been said about the class relations in Quixote - how the nobility goes through life and can't see the struggling working class (the goatherds, e.g.) who make their pampered lives possible, as they create their idealized, and delusional, worlds - Quixote's behavior in that way not so different from the Dukes who take off for Arden or for an island in Shakespeare's comedies (I've written quite a lot about this) - except that unlike Shakespeare's nobility Quixote himself is a bit of a ruin and not a very apt representative of the ruling class.

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