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The History of Don Quixote

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In Miguel de Cervantes’s book Don Quixote, the main character, a man for whom reality has become different from the rest as a result of his obsessive reading, turning an common man into one whose distortion of reality makes him walk towards unnecessary and dangerous fights against people, and sometimes things, that not only put in danger his own health but the health of others. This reckless and self-destructive man in the first part of the story becomes, ten years later, in the second part, into a careful and conscious man because of the pressure of his family and friends who saw him as a crazy man, and as a result of it he end up dying feeling that being an knight errant was his mission in life so now he had nothing else to live for. Don Quixote, first described by the author as a man “nearly fifty, robust constitution, early riser, and keen huntsman”, (25) who the reading of chivalric romance became a passion which evolved faster into an obsession, This obsession made Don Quixote see everything with other eyes, with a belief that the world was in need of a righteous man committed to fight for the common good, and that he could be this savior, thirsty for adventures and ready to give up the comfort of his home for a cause he believed was right and necessary. The more he read the more he became involved into the stories to a point that “everything he read in his book took possession in his imagination” (27). Maybe he was just trying to escape from a boring, lonely world so he decided to change, or this lonely boring world was not a place where he was prepared to live in so he needed to change it. The reason for his “madness” although unclear, becomes irrelevant, because even when his intentions were always good his actions put in danger his life and the life of others. In most if not all of his fights trough his first two journeys Don Quixote never took a moment to stop and see the danger he was about to run into becaus

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