The tragedy of Don Quixote lies in its dismemberment of once-sacred moral concepts, which is based on one heavy contradiction: to eliminate the dying hypocritical chivalry, but designed a soft but sincere defender. Thus, when people are fighting against corrupt morality, they suddenly realize that the "enemy" standing in front of them is a weak old man, and there is no more thrill of destruction, no more valor of bloodshed, and they even review their own righteousness in the face of the resistance of a weak man. As it happens, what Don Quixote practiced was not hypocritical chivalry, not moral deception, but a long-lost spirit: infinite loyalty to God, and love to the death.
When Don Quixote begins to fight for his spiritual home, a second contradiction emerges: the true sense of chivalry has long been infiltrated by hypocritical morality, and secular values have become like a lumbering aircraft carrier, shifting from loyalty to God and veneration of heroes to the pursuit of individual values. The change in secular values, though lagging behind, has a strong inertia and enduring resilience, which the thin but wild Don Quixote tries to reverse, so that, by the power of his faith alone and despite his own insignificance, he rushes unhesitatingly towards the huge windmill, while a cloud of absurd dust rises in his wake. Let us not discuss whether the Protestant ethic is a driving force for social development. Just think about it, when people emancipated themselves from the Middle Ages under the banner of individuality, didn't they once again have the need for faith? We can say that this is the wave and spiral of history, but from this we can also find that Don Quixote and Don Quixote-like slogans can be summarized in one word - anachronistic. But there is no denying that such anachronisms are essential if one is to remain calm and sober in the midst of radical change.
It is this contradiction that deconstructs the necessity of Don Quixote's existence - he becomes superfluous, and is later "diagnosed" as "mad". While the values of the madman are naturally rejected by orthodox values, Don Quixote's dream is justified by the fact that it contains the virtues of human nature, and the secular rejection of justification constitutes another level of contradiction. If the barber's and the priest's trickery in the first book is still a goodwill gesture of secular values towards Don Quixote, the Duke's willful amusement in the second book declares the complete rejection, exclusion, and spurning of the secular values, which have simply lost the significance of being integrated, and can be used only for amusement. This colors this rejection with a tragic undertone.
The tragedy does not end there. The tragedy created by Kafka and Lu Xun cannot find a way out, but no matter how idiosyncratic the protagonists are, they persist. Cervantes, however, pointedly destroyed the last ray of hope - Don Quixote "repented" on his deathbed, which is no longer the death of a defender, but the extinction of a value, Don Quixote became the return of chivalry and heroism. When moral fervor is extinguished before the coldness of history, the dust settles, the flag falls, Don Quixote the madman is quiet, and another era begins.......
This thick anti-chivalric novel leaves us with a whole lot of laughs, and as long as one isn't too impatient or lacking in a sense of humor, anyone can read this masterpiece with high spirits. This masterpiece is a joy to read. The protagonists, Don Quixote and Sancho, are a pair of living treasures in the history of world literature, like a pair of comedians, one teasing hiccups, the other hiccups, amusing the world's bookworms to the point of oblivion.
But it is, after all, a classic, and its laughs are not so simple. This pair of living treasures shines a light on the two extreme sides of our humanity: Don Quixote is a giant of spirit, Sancho is a dwarf of action. In life, we are often faced with a choice, and we often choose the fearless Don Quixote in spirit and the pragmatic Sancho in action.
A mockery of them is also a mockery of us.
Don Quixote, the fallen gentleman landowner, fascinated by reading chivalric novels, appointed himself a knight-errant, to travel the world to remove the strong and help the weak, to uphold justice and fairness, to implement the chivalry he worshiped. He went out on his own, with his squire Sancho, and went on an adventure, but he suffered a lot of setbacks and accomplished nothing, and returned to his hometown to die of depression.
The following is mainly from the novel of the gap between reality and fantasy and other aspects to analyze the contrast between the stark contradictions.
First, the work will be Don Quixote's own reality and his fantasy knight hero image to form a sharp contradiction.
First, the work will be it, Don Quixote and the hero of the novel to form a contrast, highlighting Don Quixote's comical and lovely appearance: he is obviously a more than half a hundred years old thin old man, prefer to say that he is a superhuman force, invincible model knights; his mount is obviously a skin and bones of the skin and bones of the skin and bones of the horse, but to say that it is the world's rare steeds, and also want to take the name as " Nu bay horse hard to get". Nu bay horse rare"; chivalric novels often have elixir, Don Quixote will be made according to the formula of the magic oil, drink vomit to the stomach; his sweetheart Dulcinea is obviously a thick body, loud voice, chest hairy rural girl, and the girl never had Don Quixote's heart this person, but he said she is " the most beautiful princess in the world". The world's most beautiful princess", and would like to go to the mountains to live in seclusion, for the beloved crazy crying; knight knight ordination ceremony is a very sacred and solemn religious ceremonies, and in the Don Quixote's ordination, it is in a broken stables, the host is the hotel owner, holding a mule driver to register the forage book, for him to hold the sword of the hotel in the prostitute. These make the comic contrast between his fantasy and reality deep into the reader.
Secondly, the work is written once and for all about the narrow things he does as a knight of the Ranger. He treats the windmills as giants. Obviously, there are thirty-four windmills, but at first sight, he said to his squire: "The arrangement of the canal is better than we asked for. You see, Sancho "Pansa friend, yonder appeared more than thirty surprisingly large giants, I intend to go to fight with them ......" He rushed up and very devoutly prayed to his lady Dulcinea, asking her to bless him at this critical moment. He ends up breaking himself fighting the "giants" (windmills), but still survives in the setting of his Rogue Knight novel. He was very dissatisfied with the injustice and suffering on earth, and felt that he had the sacred mission of "relieving distress and helping the weak and the strong," but he did not consider the surrounding environment, nor the conditions of time and space, but only acted according to his own inner impulses, and what he did was not only a heroic and compassionate act, not only to help the oppressed, but on the contrary, not to help the oppressed. not help the oppressed, but on the contrary he only brought disaster to the people,-which, of course, he was ignorant of himself. He saved the shepherd boy Andrés from the whipping of the countryman, but as soon as he was gone, the countryman tied the boy to a tree and beat him half to death. In this way, although Don Quixote wants to uphold justice and protect the oppressed, he comes out with an unjust act that will instead victimize the people he saves. He thinks he is taking the first step on the path of chivalry and rides back to his village with joy. The clergyman, whom he had knocked off his horse and broken his leg as a devil, said to him, "Thou hast struck a blow, but hast instead caused me to stand unleveled all the days of my life; thou hast done evil to men, but hast afflicted me with a life-long victimization." Thus it was thought that to meet Don Quixote was to meet with "the greatest calamity," and the inhabitants prayed that God would "punish all knights who at any time appear in this world, and give them no grace." The poor knight, therefore, was beaten, ridiculed and mocked along the way. Our Don Quixote, on the other hand, still does not realize the difference between his fantasy and reality. He does the chivalrous thing, and the result of the struggle made by the knight in the knightly novel is completely different, but he still thinks he is right.
Secondly, the exaggerated comic character has flesh and blood in real life, and Cervantes wrote some thoughts and feelings and moral qualities into this absurd character to make him full of realism.
He is full of passion, but he is always bumping into walls; he is so immersed in fantasy that he has completely lost his sense of reality. In his eyes, everywhere there are demons to do harm, and everything is messed up by magicians, so he slashes and stabs at imaginary funny characters. But in fact, the absurd and ridiculous stupid things he did had his good and simple motives. He attacked the windmill, thinking he was fighting the trolls who were brutalizing mankind; he freed the hard laborers in order to oppose slavery and give people freedom; he attacked the procession of the Madonna begging for rain, thinking they were robbers of beautiful women. ...... He could risk challenging the lions and throwing himself into a new challenge in spite of his injuries, he could punish the strong and protect the weak. The weak and the small. These are all because he has a kind and simple heart.
Such a person, in fact, in order to maintain justice, save the world, willing to sacrifice their lives of fearless warriors. He hated the tyranny and brutality, sympathized with the oppressed masses, yearning for freedom, to protect the legitimate rights and dignity of people, to help the weak and the strong, to eliminate the inequality of the world as their own ideals of life. He was courageous and never cowed down. He clung to his idealized chivalry, never afraid of people's comments and ridicule, not to mention insults and blows. Although he was confronted with many obstacles, he was unrepentant and sincere. No matter what can not change his original intention, worthy of being the defender of truth and justice.
Therefore, the British poet Bo Bo said he is "the most moral, the most rational madman, although we laugh at him, but also respect him and love him, because we can laugh at their own favorite people, without a little malice or contempt."
Don Quixote is a madman, but a clearly rational madman.
Third, Don Quixote's limitation into false madness fantasy when contrasted with Sancho's realistic and simple understanding of the stark contradiction.
In the novel, Sancho "Pansa" is the role of Don Quixote and the mutual antagonism, but also complementary to each other. In describing their life as rangers, the author widely used the techniques of contrast and exaggeration, forming a sharp contrast, and achieved a unique artistic effect.
Sancho is a fat and short Spanish common peasant. Due to the poverty of his family, he was persuaded by Don Quixote to become a ranger's squire. Although his character has the peasant's narrow-minded selfishness, short-sightedness, timidity and fear of trouble, and he is always planning for himself, but his practical, calm and clear side has played a great role in the later life of the ranger. He reminds Don Quixote to come back to reality from his fantasies. In his eyes, a windmill is a windmill if it is not a giant; a flock is a flock if it is not an army. He said, "Who doesn't know a windmill is a windmill unless it's whirling around in his own head?" Before each adventure of Don Quixote, Sancho always has to discourage it, and each time the discouragement is ineffective, but in the end, Sancho's discouragement is proved to be correct, which is just a sharp contrast with Don Quixote's wild fantasy. It can be said that Sancho is not only Don Quixote's companion, but also his control, like two mirrors opposite each other, reflecting each other's infinite depth. Both are indispensable.
Don Quixote reported on the great ideal, thinking about saving the world, a glance at the distant past and the future, can not see the real world, but also forget their own flesh and blood; and Sancho is Don Quixote missing the real world, everything from experience, down-to-earth. One from the ideal aspect, the other from the real aspect of the two contrast. The dialog between the two men in the text shows the best example of this contrast. When Don Quixote says that it is a giant, Sancho does not hesitate to point out that it is simply a windmill, not a giant. Despite Don Quixote's repeated emphasis that it was a windmill, he makes no pretense and decides that it was a windmill.
The contrasts throughout Don Quixote are what make the book show its infinite charm. This charm is the force behind its longevity. There are many parts of the book that struck me as unbelievable, but at the same time the presence of these contrasts convinced me that the book has its own reality, as if the living Don Quixote was there on his ranger's journey.
Don Quixote is a funny book, but as we turn the last page, we can't help but ask, "Who is really funny? Don Quixote? Or us?"