Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Cervantes was a man of almost divine tolerance and sympathy, with a feeling for humanity that only a few writers have possessed and revealed. Cervantes was a maimed ex-serviceman with no disability pension and a record which today would give him a string of medals. He had been a prisoner of war for five years, suffering hideous privations and humiliations. He had had a long life of failure as a writer without a satisfactory patron, and he had been ignominiously gaoled. In the epitaph Though hed lived a crazy man, when he died he was sane once more Cervantes views Quixote in his greatness — each man may find in him his own ideal and his own caricature; each man may ride with him and fall in the dust with him. Quixote was created at first for a small contemporary purpose.
He has become as much the heritage of succeeding generations as the messiahs and mythical figures of history and pre-history. Cervantes had known many years of penury and the indifference of his fellow authors. Yet in all his writings there is not a suggestion of self-pity or bitterness, and he views mankind with the tender understanding that is given only to wise and great-hearted men. Nothing, it seems, could destroy his magnificent passion, nothing distort his vision. For Cervantes, and for all those whose lives are a protest against the depraved tenets of life, Don Quixote is One against Them, the inescapable. Quixotes actions may seem insane for many. Quixote tilted against the power of those who could not see that his country wench was a queen, of those who held prisoners in captivity, of those who harmed his horse, against giants and tyrants of every kind. His enemies have changed their names and forms a little and have more respectable appearances, but they are enemies still, complacent, self-righteous, and overbearing, the forces of regimentation, the omnipotent despots of consuetude, before whom all others tumble.
The Essay on Love In The Elephant Mans Life
MIKE MINELLO Love in The Elephant Mans Life The novel The Elephant Man by Christine Sparks tells a melodramatic story of a man who s appearance is so startling, it prevents him from experiencing the essential love most people experience in life. John Merrick is robbed of his childhood when his mother abandons him. He is also degraded and disregarded as a human being when he is put on display as ...
I think that Don Quixote forges an imaginary world in many episodes throughout the book in order to calm his intense spirit and his distress on seeing that he cannot realize his dreams in the outer world, which means that he is sane. This imaginary world provides him with an original and unique pretext for carrying forward his great experience. Quixote may seem the victim of illusion, but the truth is that Don Quixote cannot carry out his ideal in this world..
