| Term Paper Title | Man Of La Mancha |
| # of Words | 670 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 2.68 |
Man Of La Mancha
"Man of La Mancha" is the story of Alonso Quijana, a poor gentleman from
Spain. He has read so many of the exaggerated romances of chivalry that he
finally believes them to be his reality and sets forth as Don Quixote, a
knight-errant on his old horse seeking many misadventures. And while this
insanity may be an object of distress for others, Quixote's madness is
comforting to himself.
And all he reads oppresses him . . . fills him with indignation at man's
murderous ways toward man. He broods . . . and broods . . . and broods- and
finally from so much brooding his brains dry up! He lays down the melancholy
burden of sanity and conceives the strangest project ever imagined . . . to
become a knight-errant and sally forth into the world to right all wrongs.
Although it appears that Don Quixote has just jumped off the deep end into a
sea of dementia, he is merely exchanging the cruel harsh reality of life for
his noble, fantastic dream world. Don sees himself as the "defender of the
right and pursuer of lofty undertakings," not a senile old man. The books in
which Quixote had engrossed himself during his retirement portrayed the world
as a place much nobler and happier than this world really is. In his
fantasy, the world he has read about comes to life and Quixote is much
happier than he ever was before. Yet, all who come in contact with Quixote,
see him as a "clown on a masquerade" and a poor old man, but Quixote is much
more content living this life than his old one.
Even when others laugh in his face, Don Quixote continues to uphold the
noble code his insanity demands. After defeating the muleteers, he insists
upon helping them recover, saying, "I must raise them up and minister to
their wounds . . . Nobility demands." In the world Quixote has left, his
enemies would be left to rot, but in his own reality, h...Read entire document
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