Don Quixote de la Mancha was a middle-aged gentleman, who deluded himself into the fantasy about the knight. He was so addicted to reading books that he forgot to hunt and take care of the home. What’s more, he sold his land to purchase these books. He was attracted by the plots of the books, and his mind was filled with magic, chariots, duels, challenges and roams appearing in the plots of the books. He believed the absurd knight stories were true. He hoped he could bring order to a tumultuous world by reinstating the chivalric code of the knights-errant. He completely lost his sense of reality and fell into a boundless fantasy. He treated and dealt with everything based on his insane belief about chivalric spirits. Therefore, he made many disasters, suffered many losses and made many jokes in his adventure. In the end, he went back to his hometown, he was confined to his bed with a serious illness. Finally, he realized that his past adventure was absurd, and he was lunatic. Don Quixote had dual characters: on the one hand, he was delirious, crazy and ridiculous. On the other hand, he also represented high moral principle, the fearless spirit, the heroic action, the belief in justice and the loyalty to love. The crazier he became, the more disastrous it would be to almost everyone who met him.
The plot, which gives the deepest impression, is the fight between Don Quixote and windmills. He thought the windmills were giants with long arms and big wings. He thought he should fight these evils to reinstate the chivalric code of the knights-errant. He talked with the “giants” and asked them not to escape. Sancho told him what he saw was windmills, but he insisted that these were giants and thought Sancho was timid. He prayed fervently to his lady, Dulcinea to ask her to protect him. Then, he covered himself with a shield, rode on a horse with a lance, and rushed towards a windmill. He pierced one wing of the windmill, but the lance was broken, and the windmill swept out him. He tumbled to the ground.
The conversation between Don Quixote and Sancho highlights the characters of Don Quixote, for example, “Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth”.
From this conversation, we can see that he was escapist, starry-eyed, and saucy. He thought the description of the chivalric novel was real and tried to revive the outdated chivalry by his “chivalry behavior”. Immersed in fantasy, he lost all sense and judgment of reality. In his eyes, there were demons and wizards everywhere. That’s why he indiscriminately attacked imaginary giants and hoped to uphold justice and reform the society based on this ridiculous behavior. Though he had a good intention and was filled with sincerity, he always failed.