Don Quixote on the Road to Barcelona :: Don Quixote Essays

Don Quixote on the Road to Barcelona This paper will analyze the passage in the book Don Quixote where Sancho physically fights with Quixote to prevent Quixote from lashing him. On a practical joke playing duke's suggestion in the last chapter Sancho had promised to lash himself over 3000 times as a way to remove the spell that turned Quixote love interest, lady "Dona Dulcinea del Toboso," from a noblewoman to a peasant girl. Whether is was intentional or not the theme of the common man asserting himself against capricious punishment and rule by the nobles is evident in this passage. The passage opens - "Master and man dismounted from their beasts, and as soon as they had settled themselves at the foot of the trees, Sancho, who had had a good noontide meal that day, let himself, without more ado, pass the gates of sleep." Sancho is and represents is the common man in Cervante's book. Like all peasants Sancho worries about practical matters and lives in the moment, (though he has clearly begun to believe in Quixote's quest when he told his wife earlier in the book that he was sticking with Quixote). Like all common men he has little to worry him in the here and now and puts the break in their travels to good use by nodding off. "But Don Quixote, whom his thoughts, far more than hunger, kept awake, could not close an eye, and roamed in fancy to and fro through all sorts of places." In Don Quixote, Cervantes paints the nobleman, or one at least one who fancies himself noble. Like all noblemen Quixote troubles himself with thoughts of high importance. He is unable to nod off with Sancho's ease because he has many things on his mind. "At one moment it seemed to him that he was in the cave of Montesinos and saw Dulcinea, transformed into a country wench, skipping and mounting upon her she-ass; again that the words of the sage Merlin were sounding in his ears, setting forth the conditions to be observed and the exertions to be made for the disenchantment of Dulcinea." This sentence alludes to an adventure earlier in the book in the enchanted caves of Montesinos.