Ever see Fractured Fairy Tales? As a kid I loved watching the cartoon from the sixties. The five-minute episodes featured knights and damsels, kings and commoners in humorous parodies of stories for children. The shorts aired during morning programming for kids, but parents were the target of the writers. The show entertained with wit, often including touches of social and political commentary.
With similar humor and wit Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. I recognized immediately its cartoonlike genre and short chapters, so I chose breakfast time for reading it. Like a kid who used to watch a cartoon before going to school, I smiled through an episode of Quixote before going to work. One hundred and twenty-five chapters gave as many escapes from adulthood.
The book’s characters fart, puke, cross-dress, get drunk, strike each other, flog themselves, and play adult practical jokes. It’s hilarious and juvenile but written for adults. Published in Spain in 1605, the book was so enjoyed that Cervantes wrote a sequel. Both are included in the 1885 English translation. Today it’s still funny and its social and political commentary still applies.
What’s funny is that fifty-year-old villager Quixote has read so many stories of chivalry he gets the notion he’s a knight. The age of chivalry has passed for a century, but Quixote dons heirloom armor, mounts a tired horse, and sets out for adventure.
Deluded by his obsession he takes innocent individuals for enemies, challenges them, then in cartoonlike violence delivers blows and receives them back. Sidekick Sancho Panza is unable to get his master to see what things really are. The lazy, simple, farm laborer accompanies Quixote on an ass, shares the consequences, and stays faithful for one reason: Quixote promises to win him an island to govern.
Quixote is mad, of course, and those who don’t yet know find out fast. In one scene a traveling entertainer makes Quixote special guest at his puppet show. During the performance, Quixote watches as a puppet knight and his puppet lover are chased by puppet horsemen. At this Quixote draws his sword and showers blows on the miniature mounted Moors.
In another scene, some who know Quixote’s madness have fun with it. A duke and duchess invite Quixote and Panza to their court for their own entertainment. The noble pair, as part of a long-running practical joke, convince knight and squire to mount a wooden horse with a peg in its head, and make them believe it’s flying them to a remote kingdom.
Cervantes strings a hundred such scenes together, moving character Quixote from beginning to end in a way that makes sense, holds attention, and entertains. There’s social and political commentary to think about or to let go. If you just want reading that brings back the feeling of juvenile cartoon-like fun, give Quixote a try.
Jim's Writing 