Don Quixote Discussion Questions #2

The actual questions, below, are in italics.

Don Quixote is widely believed to be the first actual “novel”.  The novel is an extended prose work of realism (vs. fantasy or Romance) that focuses on the experience and/or development of the protagonist as he negotiates a “realistic” world (one that operates according to the laws of physics and our empirical (vs. imaginative or spiritual) view of reality; in the novel, action is subservient to character, while in the Romance and similar genres (like the Epic), character is subservient to plot and Idealized values or "valor".  To make sense of this difference, consider that the character Don Quixote is a character in a novel, and he has been reading Romances;  we are constantly reminded of the difference between the two genres by the fact that these Romances are not realistic and have therefore lead him to misunderstand reality.

And yet…and yet…Don Quixote is no more “real” than Achilles or Sir Gawain; they are all, actually, fantasy.  And so, in this very first novel, this very first work of absolute realism, Cervantes is careful to establish that “realism” is itself a fictive conceit: that a realistic novel is still a work of absolute fiction, no more “real” in the ontological, absolute sense, than is a work of absolute fantasy;  he is careful to show us, the readers of novel Don Quixote, that we have mistaken “realism” for reality exactly as Don Quixote has mistaken Medieval Romances as “real” and true, and he seems intent on undermining his own narrative structure.  The following questions will help us piece together this important theme:

1) Who is Cid Hamete (see chapters VIII and IX)?  Between the actual events of the story and the book in your hands, how many other people does Cervantes suggest had a hand in writing that book?  Why, even according to Cervantes himself, should we doubt the accounts of Don Quixote, character, given in Don Quixote, the book?

2) How is Don Quixote ultimately defeated and by whom; why is this ironic, and how might it suggest that, ultimately, Don Quixote is, in fact, ultimately actually victorious in terms of creating his romantic, Idealistic vision of a chivalric world?

3) Although we don't get to read these sections, throughout Book 2 Don Quixote mostly meets people who have already read Book 1, and they all greet him with an ironic sense of honor and renown, exactly (minus the irony), the honor and renown he had originally set out to gain.  This establishes him as something of a (fictitious) celebrity, like a movie star: a man who is playing a part so well that society has elevated his fictional exploits to a degree of actual, real heroism.  This leads me to wonder:

Can movie stars (or characters from books, or athletes etc.) play the social role of real heroes?  Can, for example, a Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie truly, actually serve the same social purpose as, say, a Neil Armstrong or Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or (name your own real hero here)?  In other words, is there really any difference -- in terms of their social functions -- between fictional and real heroes?  Has Don Quixote in fact proven himself a genius as he has, indeed, become exactly what he attempted to become, or is he simply just a clown;  can a clown (Robin Williams, Owen Wilson) be a hero...?

Let's push this further: is it important for readers to believe that the Bible is historically/scientifically accurate in order to learn what is has to teach us?

4) We recently looked at Cortez as an actual, historical "epic hero", suggesting that in reality such "heroes" were in fact bloodthirsty marauders behaving in ways more akin to Hitler than a mythologized Ideal.  The novel Don Quixote takes a similarly "modern" perspective to the absurdity of mythological heroism -- were we to meet historically accurate heroes in "reality" they would lose their heroism.  But this is a fairly cynical view of heroism, of epics and of Romantic Ideals. 

Take a moment to imagine a world in which humans had not created fiction, storytelling, songs, a world in which we were completely rooted in Plato's "sensibile" (sensory/physical) world: a mind governed entirely by rationality and facts and none of this Quixotic imagining we've spent so much time with this semester...no Katy Perry or Disney filling up our minds with hopeless romanticism....  What would that world be like?  Better? Worse? How? Why?

Referring to specific works we’ve read this semester, what are some of the Ideals you have learned from these works that you feel will help you lead a more noble, virtuous life…even though these Ideals may be based on complete fiction?

5) In the aggregate, the big question we are asking here is: is Don Quixote just a madman and/or a fool, or is he also a hero? Or both?