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Don Quixote · Part One

The Galley Slaves and the Sierra

LoveAppearance and RealityMadnessJustice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Section summary

Six chapters in which what the gentleman sees ceases to coincide with what exists: a procession of clerics, six pestle hammers, a barber's basin. In the middle stands the only good deed he performs in full, the liberation of the galley slaves, and the payment it earns him; the flight takes them to the Sierra Morena, where a second madman asks him to listen without interrupting.

Chapter XIX: The Funeral Procession and the Sorrowful Countenance

Chapter summary

Sancho opens the chapter with a theory: the misfortunes of the last few days, the blanket and the kicks, are the penalty for the sin of Don Quixote against the order of chivalry, for not having kept the oath not to eat bread at a tablecloth or take his pleasure with the queen until he had taken the helmet of that Malandrino, "or whatever the Moor's name is." The gentleman concedes that he forgot it, thinks the blanket came because Sancho did not remind him in time, and promises amendment, because chivalry has "forms of composition" for everything. Sancho asks whether he swore anything at all; the master says it does not matter, it is enough that he understand that Sancho, as a companion, is not safe regarding the penalty. With this, night overtakes them in the middle of the road, with no inn in sight and no saddlebags, and Sancho Panza half dead of hunger.

Analysis

Then lights come along the road, so many that they look like stars on the march: some twenty hooded riders on horseback with lit torches and, behind them, a litter covered in mourning, followed by six riders in black, down to the hooves of their mules. Sancho's teeth chatter. His master, on the contrary, sees in his imagination one of the adventures from the books:

Figurósele que la litera eran andas donde debía de ir algún mal ferido o muerto caballero, cuya venganza a él solo estaba reservada, it occurred to him that the litter was a bier on which some badly wounded or dead knight must be travelling, whose vengeance was reserved for him alone.

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Chapter XX: The Fulling Mills

Chapter summary

Sancho Panza, with thirst worse than hunger, notices that the grass of the meadow is a sign of a spring nearby, and the two set off feeling their way, Don Quixote holding Rocinante's rein and Sancho the donkey's. Before two hundred paces they hear a great sound of water pouring from the rocks, and right after it a crash that takes away the pleasure of the water: blows struck in rhythm, with a creaking of iron and chains. The night is dark, they are among tall trees whose leaves, stirred by a gentle wind, make a soft and fearful sound, and the blows do not stop, the wind does not sleep, and the morning does not come. The gentleman mounts Rocinante, takes up his shield, couches his lance and makes his speech:

Analysis

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Chapter XXI: Mambrino's Helmet

Appearance and Reality

Chapter summary

It begins to rain a little, and Sancho Panza wants to take shelter in the fulling mill; but Don Quixote has taken such a dislike to that place, because of the mockery, that he will not enter at all and turns the road to the right. A little further on he sees a man on horseback who carries on his head something that gleams as if it were gold, and he turns to Sancho with a proverb: there is no saying that is not true, and "where one door closes, another opens." If last night a door was closed on them, deceiving them with the pestle hammers, now another, better and surer, is thrown wide open for them, and if he misses the entrance the fault will be his alone, and he cannot blame it on the little news of pestle hammers or on the darkness of the night. The one coming is the man who wears on his head the helmet of Mambrino, about which he swore the oath that Sancho knows. The squire asks him to look carefully at what he says and even more carefully at what he does, since he does not want other pestle hammers to finish trampling his wits. The master retorts, "What has a helmet to do with pestle hammers?" and asks:

Analysis

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Chapter XXII: The Galley Slaves

Justice and LawFreedom and Oppression

Chapter summary

Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arabic and Manchegan author, tells that Don Quixote saw coming along the road some twelve men on foot, strung like beads on a great iron chain by their necks, all with manacles on their hands; with them were two men on horseback with wheel-lock muskets, and two on foot with javelins and swords. Sancho Panza recognized them at once: it is a chain of galley slaves, people condemned by the king to go to the galleys. The gentleman finds it strange that the king should force anyone, and concludes that people, "even though they are led away, go by force and not by will"; it is here that the exercise of his office fits, undoing force and aiding the wretched. Sancho warns that justice, which is the king himself, neither uses force nor does wrong to such people, but punishes them for their crimes. The gentleman asks the guards, courteously, to tell him the cause of each man's sentence. The first guard replies that they are galley slaves of His Majesty and there is nothing more to say; the other gives him leave to ask the men themselves, who will tell him if they wish, and they do wish, because they are people who take pleasure in doing and telling of roguery.

The first goes as a lover: he loved a basket of white linen so much, and embraced it so tightly, that only justice could take it from him by force. Caught in the act, without torture, he got a hundred lashes and three years of gurapas, which are the galleys. The second, sad and silent, goes "for a canary," and the guard explains it: singing under torment is confessing. He was a mule thief, he confessed, and the other thieves mistreat him for not having had the spirit to say no, because they say a "no" has as many letters as a "yes." The third goes for five years for lacking ten ducats, and he rejects the twenty Don Quixote offers him as the offer of someone with money in the middle of the gulf who dies of hunger with nowhere to buy. Had he had them in time, he would have greased the clerk's pen and sharpened the attorney's wit, and would be in the Zocodover square, not here, harnessed like a greyhound. The fourth is an old man with a venerable face, a white beard down to his chest, who weeps and does not answer. The fifth explains him: four years for procuring, and for having tufts and a sorcerer's collar. Don Quixote defends the trade, which is for discreet people and necessary to a well-ordered commonwealth, and which only well-born people should practice, with an examiner as there is for brokers on the exchange. What grieves him is the title of sorcerer, but he says there are no spells that can force the will, since our free will is free. The old man says that of sorcery he was not guilty, that of procuring he cannot deny it, and that he never meant to do harm: the intention was for everyone to enjoy themselves and live in peace. Sancho, moved with compassion, gives him a real of four as alms. The sixth, in student's dress, boasts with gallantry that he had too much fun with two first cousins and two sisters who were not his own, and the kinship grew so intricate that no devil can untangle it. Everything was proven, favor and money were lacking, and they sentenced him to six years of galleys, which he accepted: it is the punishment for his fault, he is young, and he can bear it.

Analysis

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Chapter XXIII: The Valise in the Sierra

Chapter summary

Battered, Don Quixote tells Sancho Panza that he has always heard that doing good to villains is pouring water into the sea, and that had he believed the squire, he would have spared himself the displeasure. Sancho replies that his master will learn from this no more than Sancho is a Turk, but asks him to seek his counsel again, because with the Holy Brotherhood chivalry is not practiced, and already it seems to him that its arrows whistle in his ears. The gentleman calls him a naturally cowardly fellow and yields this time, on one condition: that Sancho never, in life or in death, say to anyone that he withdrew from danger out of fear, and not because he gave in to the squire's pleas, for in that case he would deny it at once and forever. Only at the thought of withdrawing, he says, is he ready to stay and wait not only for the Brotherhood, but for all the brothers and brotherhoods in the world, even the twelve tribes of Israel and the seven Maccabees. Sancho replies:

Analysis

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Chapter XXIV: The Ragged Man and Cardenio

LoveMadness

Chapter summary

The Ragged One of the Sorry Figure thanks Don Quixote for his courtesy, having nothing with which to repay him beyond good wishes. The gentleman replies that his own are to serve him, so much so that he had decided not to leave those mountains until he found him and learned whether the strangeness of his life had a remedy; and that if the misfortune were one of those that shut the doors on all consolation, he would help him weep over it.

The offer does not depend on knowing the cause: in misfortune, it is still a consolation to find someone who grieves over it. He seals it with an oath by the order of chivalry, and asks only that the other say who he is and why he lives among solitudes like a brute beast. The answer comes from the body: the Ragged One looks at him, looks again, and asks for something to eat.

Analysis

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Reading of the Part

Analysis

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