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Don Quixote · Part One

Marcela and the Inn

LoveAppearance and RealityMadnessFreedom and Oppression

Section summary

Outside the road, the romance spends eight chapters in two settings. In the goatherds' fields, a dead lover and a shepherdess who defends herself stage the freedom that Don Quixote knew only how to praise in the past. At the inn, the bed, the blanket, and the balsam show what it costs to take a tavern for a castle. The flocks of chapter XVIII close the series with the explanation the gentleman already has ready: the wise enemy.

Chapter XI: The Goatherds and the Golden Age

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

The goatherds take in Don Quixote, with his ear still wounded from the fight with the Biscayan, and Sancho Panza, in very good spirits. Sancho settles Rocinante and the donkey as best he can and goes after the smell of some goat meat boiling in a cauldron. The six goatherds of the sheepfold spread sheepskins on the ground, hastily set up a rustic table, and invite the two to share what they have, after begging the gentleman, with coarse ceremony, to sit on a trough turned upside down. Sancho stands to serve him his cup, which is a horn. Seeing him standing, his master orders him to sit beside him, so that he may see the good that knight-errantry contains: the squire will eat from his master's plate and drink wherever his master drinks, for of knight-errantry one may say the same as of love, that it makes all things equal. Sancho thanks him and declines, for the only reason he has:

Analysis

mucho mejor me sabe lo que como en mi rincón, sin melindres ni respetos, aunque sea pan y cebolla, que los gallipavos de otras mesas donde me sea forzoso mascar despacio, beber poco, limpiarme a menudo, no estornudar ni toser si me viene gana, ni hacer otras cosas que la soledad y la libertad traen consigo, what I eat in my own corner tastes much better to me, without fussiness or deference, even if it is only bread and onion, than the turkeys at other tables, where I am forced to chew slowly, drink little, wipe myself often, not sneeze or cough when I feel like it, nor do the other things that solitude and freedom bring with them.

Don Quixote wants the squire seated because equality at table is proof that the order he serves is worth more than the world judges. Sancho refuses on bodily grounds: he wants to eat in peace, without the ceremony that honor brings. His master pulls him by the arm with the proverb that God exalts whoever humbles himself. It may be generosity, or it may be the need to show the goatherds what the books say a knight does.

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Chapter XII: What the Goatherd Told of Marcela

Freedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Another lad, one of those who bring provisions to the goatherds, arrives from the village with the news of the day: that morning Grisóstomo, the student shepherd, died, and it is said that it was for love of the devilish Marcela, daughter of the rich Guillermo, who wanders the wilds dressed as a shepherdess. The dead man left in his will that he be buried in the field, like a Moor, at the foot of the rock by the spring under the cork oak where he first saw her, and he asked for other things which the village priests judge heathen and refuse to carry out. His friend Ambrosio, also a student dressed as a shepherd, demands that everything be carried out, and the people are in an uproar. The will of Ambrosio and of the shepherd friends should prevail, and the burial will take place the next day, with great pomp. The goatherds resolve to go all together, drawing lots for who stays behind to watch the goats. Don Quixote asks Pedro, one of the goatherds, to tell him who the dead man was and who the shepherdess is.

Analysis

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Chapter XIII: Vivaldo, the Defense of Chivalry, and the Burial

Chapter summary

At break of day, five of the six goatherds go to wake Don Quixote to ask whether he still wants to see Grisóstomo's burial. The gentleman, who wanted nothing else, orders Sancho Panza to saddle and pack at once. A little further on they meet six shepherds in black sheepskins, crowned with cypress and bitter oleander, and two traveling gentlemen with three servants on foot, who are also going to the burial. One of them is Vivaldo, and it is he who, seeing the gentleman armed in such a peaceful land, asks him why. Don Quixote replies that his profession does not allow him to go any other way, that good pace, comfort, and rest were invented for soft courtiers, and that labor, restlessness, and arms were made only for those whom the world calls knights-errant, of whom he is, though unworthy, the least.

Everyone takes him for a madman, and to find out what kind of madness it is, Vivaldo asks him what he means by "knights-errant." The gentleman explains with the story of King Arthur, who did not die but was turned into a raven by enchantment and will return to reign, and of the knights of the Round Table, of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, of Doña Quintañona, and of Amadis of Gaul, Felixmarte of Hyrcania, Tirant the White, and Belianís of Greece. He concludes that this is the order and that he has made profession in it: to offer his arm to the most perilous adventure that fortune may give, in aid of the weak and the needy.

Analysis

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Chapter XIV: Grisóstomo's Verses and Marcela's Defense

LoveFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Vivaldo reads the "Desperate Song" of Grisóstomo. The poet asks the cruel one that her hardness be published from tongue to tongue, summons the roar of the lion, the howl of the wolf, and the ominous song of the crow to accompany his pain, and says that disdain kills, that suspicion kills, and that jealousy kills with greater rigor. He says that he lives, a miracle never seen, jealous, absent, disdained, and certain of the suspicions that have killed him. He calls upon the torments of hell (Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, Aegeon) to sing the funeral rites for a body to which even a shroud is denied, and he asks the song itself not to lament leaving him. The listeners find it good, but whoever has read it notices that it does not agree with what has been said of the modesty and goodness of Marcela, because in it Grisóstomo complains of jealousy, suspicion, and absence, to the detriment of her good name. Ambrosio, who knew his friend's most hidden thoughts, explains that he wrote it deliberately in absence, to see whether absence would bring him what presence did not, and that the jealousy and suspicions that wearied him were imagined. Marcela's reputation for goodness stands firm, and she, besides being cruel, a little arrogant, and very disdainful, is such that not even envy can find fault with her.

Analysis

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Chapter XV: The Galician Muleteers and the Law of Dueling

Justice and Law

Chapter summary

Having taken leave of the burial, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza enter the wood where Marcela had gone, and they search for her for more than two hours without finding her, until they stop in a meadow of fresh grass beside a stream, which invites them to spend the siesta there. The donkey and Rocinante are let loose to graze, and the two of them dispatch the saddlebags without ceremony. Sancho did not tie up the horse, certain that it was so gentle and so little spirited that not even all the mares of Córdoba would tempt it. But fate willed that a herd of little Galician mares belonging to some muleteers, who have the custom of resting in such places of grass and water, should happen to pass by. Rocinante, who leaves his natural pace without asking his owner's leave, goes to communicate his need to the ladies, and they, more eager to graze than for anything else, receive him with hooves and teeth until they break his girths and leave him without a saddle. Worse still: seeing the violence done to their mares, the muleteers come running with stakes and knock him badly to the ground.

Analysis

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Chapter XVI: The Castle That Was an Inn

Chapter summary

The innkeeper, seeing Don Quixote laid across the donkey, asks Sancho Panza what harm he has, and Sancho replies that it is nothing: his master fell from a cliff and walks with his ribs bruised. The innkeeper's wife is not the kind the trade usually produces. She is charitable and sympathizes with the misfortunes of others, and she calls her daughter, a maiden of good appearance, to help her cure the guest. Also serving at the inn is an Asturian girl, Maritornes, broad-faced, flat-necked, snub-nosed, cross-eyed in one eye and not very sound in the other, whose sprightliness of body makes up for her other lacks. The three of them make Don Quixote a wretched bed in a shed that had once been a hayloft: four poorly planed boards over two uneven benches, a mattress of wool clumps so hard they seemed pebbles, two sheets of shield-leather, and a blanket whose threads could be counted. In the same room sleeps a muleteer, whose bed of packsaddles and the blankets of his mules is much better than the gentleman's.

Analysis

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Chapter XVII: The Enchanted Moor, the Balsam, and the Blanket

Chapter summary

Don Quixote comes back from his faint and calls his squire in the same tone he had used the day before, when he lay stretched out in the valley of the stakes. Sancho Panza does not sleep, full of grief and spite, because it seems to him that all the devils went after him that night. His master agrees, because that castle is enchanted, but before telling him more, he makes Sancho swear secrecy until after his death, for he is an enemy of anyone's honor being taken away. Sancho swears, with the reservation that he may be allowed to reveal it tomorrow, for he does not like to keep things and does not want them to rot from being kept. Then the gentleman tells his tale: the daughter of the lord of the castle came to him, most beautiful, and while he was with her in sweetest converse, without his seeing her or knowing from where, a hand attached to the arm of a huge giant came and gave him a punch that bathed his jaws in blood, and then pounded him worse than the day before with the Galicians.

Analysis

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Chapter XVIII: The Armies That Were Flocks

Appearance and RealityHonor and Reputation

Chapter summary

Sancho Panza reaches his master limp and unconscious, so badly that he cannot even touch the donkey. Don Quixote says that he now truly believes the inn is enchanted, since who but ghosts and people from the other world would amuse themselves in that way with him, and he confirms it by the fact that, at the corral fence, he had been unable either to climb over it or to dismount from Rocinante. He would avenge himself, he swears, even if it went against the laws of chivalry, which do not allow a knight to lay hands on one who is not a knight, except in defense of his own life. Sancho replies that he too would avenge himself, armed knight or not, but he could not; and he thinks that those who tossed them in the blanket were men of flesh and bone like themselves, with names, which he heard when they were tossing him: Pedro Martínez, Tenorio Hernández and, from the innkeeper, Juan Palomeque the Left-Handed. Not being able to jump the fence or dismount was nothing other than enchantment. Draw the conclusion from this that adventures like those will end by bringing so many misfortunes that they will not know which is their right foot, and that the best course would be to return to the village, now that it is harvest time and the farm needs tending.

The gentleman replies that he knows little of chivalry, and that the day will come when Sancho will see how honorable it is: is there any greater contentment in the world than winning a battle and triumphing over the enemy? Sancho retorts that he does not know, that since they became knights-errant, or his master did, he has no reason to count himself in so honorable a number; they never won a battle at all, except that of the Biscayan, and from that one his master came out with half an ear and half a helmet fewer. After that it was only sticks and fists, plus the blanket-tossing, and at the hands of enchanted people, whom he cannot take revenge on. His master agrees that the penalty is the same and promises to go in search of a sword of such make that whoever carries it cannot suffer enchantments, like Amadis's when he was called the Knight of the Burning Sword; Sancho foresees that it will serve only armed knights, like the balsam, and that squires can go to the devil. The master replies that he should not worry, that heaven will do better by him.

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Reading of the Part

Analysis

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