Enrique Oñate
AP Lang and Comp
Causal Essay
Excuses to Not Read
In Don Quixote’s time, reading serves as the only entertainment in the home. Most people lacked education and took some of these books as reality rather than fantasy. Don Quixote fell into this category. Unfortunately for him, the books he read were unrealistic. Giants and massive armies ceased to exist, but Don Quixote visualized these things in common passive objects like windmills and herds of sheep. Don Quixote learned everything that he knows from the books that he read. Don Quixote’s fixation didn’t stop there though, he “became so immersed in his reading that he spent whole nights…and his days… poring over his books, until, finally… his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind” (Cervantes, 832). He was a wealthy, intelligent farmer who read too many books about knight-errantry and went crazy. He convinced a simple-minded peasant named Sancho to become his squire, promising him wealth and a high spot in society. Don Quixote learned everything that he knows from the books that he read. They both were convinced that they performed brave and honorable acts of chivalry, when they truly only looked like two fools running around the countryside. The common theme present in all of the romance novels that he read showed a brave knight doing whatever he could for the love of his life. In his case he chose a peasant from a local village. She paid no attention to him, but in his mind she equated to a princess. To everyone else she was a little peasant girl with no value to the common man. He named her Dona Dulcinea del Toboso and challenged people to show his strength. On his adventure he tries to save others’ lives putting himself in danger. He receives multiple beatings from people he confronts. Many people take advantage of him because they realize that his mind’s excessive exposure to his books create a vulnerable man that believes anything that makes his life into one of the stories that he reads. Knights provide protection to those who need it. In the common and normal world, the protection prevents armies from harming others, or as a personal protection like protection for the king. In the fiction novels