Day 8 of 31 - I Am I, Don Quixote

My wonderful sister sent this quote to me earlier today.  She saw it on Google:

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad. - George Bernard Shaw

She decided to send this to me because she knows my affinity for the book, Don Quixote.  I have read this book several times and love it every time.  I have seen the musical version, Man of La Mancha, and enjoy that story just as well because it is a good summary of such a large book.

But back to the quote.  I think that Shaw was a little nuts himself to say something like that.  Yes, the character, Don Alonso Quijana - who later becomes Don Quixote - is a learned man that devours books like most people devour chips and salsa.  He has read adventure stories from throughout all of history and is able to discuss them with his colleagues.  But according to Shaw, it is because he starts believing in these stories that Quijana (Quixote) starts to go mad.  I don't think so.  Quijana is a feeble old man who yearns for a world that is similar to those adventure stories that he reads.  Is there any harm in that?  No.

People who don't have any dreams, any ambitions, any thirst for life, may as well just sit back and let the world pass them by because that is what they are basically doing.  For Quijana, he decided that there was room enough in this world for one more adventurer and his squire.  For Quijana, he changed his life from gentleman status to knight-errant and lived his life that way, searching for good deeds to accomplish and a fair maiden whose name to accomplish them in.

Quixote found all of that.  And yet, Shaw still saw him as a crazy old man.  So did Quijana's family and they worked hard to get him to realize that he was nothing but a fool, to the extent where it nearly killed him.  But despite all of the "ramblings of an old man", there were two people that believed him even if their hearts originally didn't want to.  The prostitute, Aldonza, whom Quijana renamed Dulcinea, and saw in her a virtue that she had never seen in herself.  And Sancho Panza, the poor friend of Quijana that became his squire.

Sancho followed Quixote as a way to get away from his own poor life and act like a caretaker for the ailing Quijana.  Aldonza, for her part, met Quixote during his quest and was revolted by his advances and kindness.  But it was that kindness - that madness, as Shaw called it - that eventually led Aldonza to accept the fact that to this old man, she really was Dulcinea.

The musical, Man of La Mancha, reminds all of us "To dream the impossible dream".  Shaw may have been somewhat right in calling Quixote a madman, but without madmen in the world, nothing would ever get discovered, nothing would be invented and no one would ever do anything worth talking about.  For all of Don Quixote's foibles, people still talked about him.  Good or bad, people always remembered him for doing something about the world, even if what he wanted to do didn't work.


Until tomorrow.