Like me, Quixote seeks the same experiences he read about in literary romances (fully convinced these things will come to him), but encounters the real world: "The don's reward for these wish-chasing heroics is gruesome physical hurt. Crashing into the hard knocks of life, he gets chewed by lions, outmuscled by pilgrims, and thwacked by windmills, ending up bone bruised in ditch after ditch" (Fletcher 168).
January 9, 2025