Alright readers last post about the book Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. The story has this constant idea that is show by Don Quixote. I mentioned the idea in my third blog post of departing from older outdated ideas of the time, with Marcela explaining how she did not wish to have a husband or be wooed by men. Don Quixote is a walking metaphor for the outdated concept of chivalry in the world. This is shown by how people react to him in situations such as him being laughed at when her first arrives at an inn to be knighted and is throughly laughed at by the women there as he tries to great them as fair maidens...to be fair they were prostitutes. The story constantly shows how Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are getting into trouble because of how Don Quixote is trying to preform a chivalrous act that either horribly backfires, or is negatively received by who he is trying to do the act for. Whenever Don Quixote tries to do battle with people the chivalrous way, but usually he was beaten either when he was down or out numbered, not in honorable single combat.
I started to at least recognize the idea because of how Don Quixote would always have a before and after statement, he would explain the situation to Sancho and then outline, more or less the way It should play out if it followed the rules of chivalry, and then Don Quixote explaining why they are not honorable, after about three or four times this is kind of hard to not notice.
My method of reading was easily rereading, the language that is used by Don Quixote is closer to old english and personally I think that that can be a pain to read and his insane view of whatever situation he is trying to describe does not help the situation. I had to reread chapters so I could fully grasp what was happening in the story and at time I would have to stop and just start marking up the book because I would read, but not really understand what was happening, also I am extremely scatterbrained at times which causes rereading to be a necessity.
I personally would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I really like this book because of how crazy the story is, and how crazy the main charter is, the way that I view the book is non-fiction but fiction because everything that is happening has the feel and style of a non-fiction book but the simple fact that the main character is a mad man and we see most of his misadventures from his point of view and that turns some simple windmills into four armed giants that must be fought. I also really like this book because of how the story progresses by not really having an overarching goal, the book basically keeps telling stories of the misadventures that the duo keeps getting into and how they either come out of the situation in a more or less okay fashion, or they completely mess up and receive a sound beating for their trouble. The book also has very good banter between the mad Don Quixote and the very sane yet trusting Sancho Panza, I think that the people that I would recommend this book to because of the banter would be just as happy or even happier than me with the banter because of how silly it is sometimes because it is just Don Quixote being crazy and other times it seems that Don Quixote could pass as being sane. Anyway I know that the people that I would recommend this book to would enjoy the banter and mixture of stupid and funny adventures because, that is how the people that I would recommend this to, and that would be family and friends, would act around each other and how they do act around each other. The book is very readable and actually engaging not because of some over arching plot but because the reader can see that Don Quixote has the best intentions in any situation he is presented with and this makes him a likable character because at the heart of the matter he is just a man, although a crazy man, who is just trying to follow a dream and be the big hero of the day on his adventure and that is what I like enough to recommend, and I know the people that I would recommend this book well enough that they would also get the character’s ambitions and start to care for him.
Brenden,
ReplyDeleteI really liked that as you were reading your independent reading book, you kept your blog readers posted with what was happening in the story, which is very much appreciated. This made me engage in the reading of the blog posts so that I did not find myself having to go back and re-read previous posts. You perked my attention about the book. I’ve heard of the book before and have considered reading it, but when it came down to it, I always chose another book to read instead of it. I think what I’ll do is go to the library and finally read it!
In your fourth blog post, you expressed your frustration with the language in the story. I actually find the older form of English much more pleasant to read; for me, at least, it seems more harmonic and softer in a way. It’s great that you didn’t just skip over parts of the book that you had trouble with and that you were persistent with trying to understand the meaning of your book (sign of a good reader right there). I totally understand what trouble you had when you were reading about Quixote’s insane ideas. I often get confused when reading more abstract writing, like the Metamorphosis, for example; it took me a while to get used to the idea of Gregor being a “bug”.
What strategies did you use to arrive at the meaning of the story, at what Miguel de Cervantes was trying to convey to the reader? Did you trace anything in particular?
Great job on your post!