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Persephone: I'm finding it so far to be very readable and likeable, but there's this ...distance that prevents me from loving it. I'm liking it more with Sancho Panza for some reason. I guess, you know, so far it seems to lack genuine emotion, which I am looking to Sancho Panza to provide.
I'm certainly enjoying it a lot more with Sancho Panza - I'm enjoying the contrast between the two, that they're actually liking being together because Quixote is educated, and mad, and Panza is stupid (still seemingly convinced that Quixote can provide him with an insula to govern), but entirely sane. There's something engaging about the way the friendship is depicted; each seems to get something out of patronising or flattering the other, and there's no real explanation of what that is other than that they fundamentally like each other's company.
That makes it a lot easier to read, and I think tempers the author's cruelty to Don Quixote - the fact that they are both trying to get what they want from life but still want the other to stick around, even when what they see in every situation is radically different. Like in the following bit of dialogue - spoilers, of a kind, for page 153:
"How can I be mistaken in what I say, you doubting traitor?" said Don Quixote. "Tell me, do you not see that knight coming toward us, mounted on a dappled gray and wearing on his head a helmet of gold?"
"What I see and can make out," responded Sancho, "is just a man riding a donkey that's gray like mine, and wearing something shiny on his head."
"Well, that is the helmet of Mambrino," said Don Quixote.
gourami, I agree that we're talking about the same thing with the angry and the funny - I wasn't expecting Cervantes to lay into his own character with quite so much glee might be a better way of expressing what I meant. I also like Panza because he tempers that; at least someone is on Quixote's side, even if the author isn't. |
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