Don Quixote Essay
Passion/Love in Don Quixote
Motivation can come from a lot of things whether it is living or not. This is no less true than in the story of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is the best-known work of Spanish literature in England. It was written and published by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra of Lepanto in 1605. Cervantes was born in Cordoba in 1547 and he fought in the Sea-Battle of Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth in 1571. He worked as a tax collector, but was jailed for accounting problems. Some historians believe that he made the idea for Don Quixote in jail. The book, Don Quixote, was published in 1605 after Cervantes received the license to publish it in 1604. The story of Don Quixote is about a man who is obsessed with the idea of becoming a knight. He meets many different people on his quest to find Dulcinea Del Toboso who he believes he has fallen in love with and wants to meet her. But, without his love for reading, he never would have wanted to become a knight. Passion, Love and Motivation can come from many different things.
One of the most important elements that caused Don Quixote to become a knight was, as previously stated, his passion for reading. His favorite genres of books to read were those of romance and chivalry. His love for these stories even caused him to give up coursing and hunting, and sold a lot of good acres of his land in order to buy more romance stories for himself. Because of his intense love for reading stories of chivalry and romance, they encouraged to him to become a knight. “The more he read, the more he longed to read; he was, as it were, stepped in books of chivalry; yet he gave ever more and more time to this, his best-loved pursuit” (Cervantes 9). This quote is introduced in Chapter 1, page one of the book. This quote, used by the Narrator, is to describe the character of Don Quixote on more levels than just his size and appearance. It is also used as the establishing piece of the story, meaning that it tells the reader about what leads to Don Quixote becoming a knight, and acts as the “starting block” for the story. The fact that the more stories he read, the more he wanted to read, shows that his passion for reading was one of the most important elements of him becoming a knight.