Don Quixote - Chapters II - IV

Our first night reading just part of the story, we moved onto chapters II through IV. My dad took a stab at the summary, which I'll include below, followed by my response:

So, in Chapter 2.

Don the man sets out on his horse on an adventure to be dubbed a knight.  Comes upon an inn/castle and is met by two ladies.  Is fed food and drink at the castle, but does not take off his shield, making drinking very difficult.  Does not have any money to pay for the stay at the inn/castle.

In chapters 3 and 4

The newly dubbed knight leaves the inn.  He comes across a farmer who has his working boy strapped to a tree and is whipping him because whenever he watches the farmers sheep, he always loses one.  Don tells the farmer to stop whipping the boy and to pay him the money that he is owed him.  The farmer agrees, however when Don rides off, the farmer ties him back to the tree to wack him some more.

Don then comes upon some men and asks the men to confirm that Dulcinea is beautiful.  They do not do that right away, so Don charges them, only to have Rosinate tumble, at which point Don is beaten, and the men leave.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nice! I think you pretty much nailed everything you put in here.

To put it all together, I think in these three chapters we start to see how much of a bumbling idiot Don Quixote actually is. He's so obsessed and committed to these ideas of knighthood and chivalry that he's read about in so many books that he can't view the world as it actually is, only in the way that he perceives/wants it to be.

For example, when he gets to the Inn, he thinks the Inn is a castle, he thinks the prostitutes in front of the Inn are actually fair maidens of the realm, and he thinks the horn is used to herd the pigs is actually a horn welcoming such a well-respected knight to the castle. Later on, while everyone at the Inn is chuckling about his madness and how insane he is, he's preparing himself for his knighthood ceremony in the morning. While standing guard over his armor, he ends up attacking two guys who unknowingly come by him trying to get to the watering trough to feed their animals.

He then proceeds to get knighted by the innkeeper, who claims to have been a knight in an earlier portion of his life, though clearly that's not the case. 

His next two encounters are pure buffoonery as well. He thinks he's this big, respectable, glamorous knight, but all of the people that he confronts literally laugh at him. He thinks he's doing these great deeds and cementing his legacy, but really, he's just making even more of a mockery of himself with each effort.

Also, just another minor thing that I enjoyed -- he says that he's letting his horse lead the way whichever direction he prefers, but really, as the author notes, the horse is just trying to head back to his own stall.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check back soon for our next post, chapters V through VII!