What do you gain by tilting at windmills?
pertinent to our discussion (if not to the question, per se) is the time the renaissance, as the role of religion as the dominating force in culture was diminishing and the role secularism increasing.
the book seems strange to the reader after a time. obviously, it was written as entertainment, a parody of romantic chivalric notions... kinda morphs into a 'historical' novel very popular at the time... suddenly, Cervantes tells us he is translating a story by another guy (never heard of him)... then the other guy steps into the story... it was subtle in its creeping themes. it may even seem like this guy doesn't quite know what he is doing... who the hell is talking? Cervantes or Quixote. then cervantes steps into the story AS the other guy. there is a growing distrust of Quixote (obviously, the man is mad) and a growing distrust of Cervantes. ah the hell with it... just read and assume nothing is what it seems. he has got us.
all the time we are laughing at Quixote, we admire his intents - his pursuit of justice, of right. the tension between reason and madness challenges our perception of what is really crazy. when we meet people like this challenging our perceptions in the pursuit of 'right', we are likely to dismiss them, but rarely without a slight tug at our conscience - "what if he is right". the uncertainty in the manner of story telling reinforces this uncertainty in the tension between perception and inception.
you see him 'tilting at windmills', an error on his part and a bootless activity, futile and wasteful. but... they weren't windmills... we are forced to ask whether we are making the error. the folks around him start out laughing but are usually drawn in to his vision just as we, as readers, are.
he is pursuing justice and 'right'. he is attacking 'symbols', conventions, accepted truths . . .dragons and giants and evil knights errant.
we are the fools if we fail to see this.
what i gain i gain from questioning the accepted verities... pulling back the curtain to see who is really operating the giant head spewing smoke and light. often, there is nothing. often there is just what is proposed. often, more often than most would suspect, is a stinking pile.
geo.
