What It Is
The insula that Don Quixote promises Sancho Panza at the start of the second sally, and that the squire keeps demanding through the whole book: first a plot of land to win at the point of a lance, then an office, that of governing better than those who govern, and finally a village of a thousand inhabitants called Barataria, which the duke and duchess give him as a joke for ten days. It is a promise the book keeps, and it keeps it inside a hoax. The word designates nothing you can see by the end; it is the prize that pays for the effort before it exists, and that is why Sancho pursues it with a greed the text never settles as ambition or the hope of a poor man. Unlike the windmills, which are worth whatever each one sees in them, the insula is worth what is expected of it, and the book spends it little by little, down to the sentence with which Sancho lets it go.
Where It Appears
The promise is made on the road. In chapter VII of Part One, as he sets out with the neighbor he has talked into being his squire, the gentleman serves up on a platter what the ancient knights used to do and promises to outdo them: within less than six days he will win a kingdom with other adjoining territories, which happen to be just right for crowning Sancho king of one of them.
Has de saber, amigo Sancho Panza, que fue costumbre muy usada de los caballeros andantes antiguos hacer gobernadores a sus escuderos de las ínsulas o reinos que ganaban, y yo tengo determinado de que por mí no falte tan agradecida usanza; antes, pienso aventajarme en ella: porque ellos algunas veces, y quizá las más, esperaban a que sus escuderos fuesen viejos; y, ya después de hartos de servir y de llevar malos días y peores noches, les daban algún título de conde, o, por lo mucho, de marqués, de algún valle o provincia de poco más a menos; pero, si tú vives y yo vivo, bien podría ser que antes de seis días ganase yo tal reino que tuviese otros a él adherentes, que viniesen de molde para coronarte por rey de uno dellos, know, my friend Sancho Panza, that it was a very common custom among the ancient knights errant to make governors of their squires of the insulas or kingdoms they conquered, and I am resolved that so grateful a custom shall not be lacking in my case; rather, I mean to surpass it, because they sometimes, and perhaps most often, waited until their squires were old, and then, worn out from serving and from bearing bad days and worse nights, gave them some title of count or, at most, marquis, of some valley or province of little more or less; but if you live and I live, it may well be that within six days I win such a kingdom, with others adjoining it, that will come just right to crown you king of one of them.
In chapter X of Part One, after the fight with the friars and the Biscayan, Sancho asks for the government of the insula he has won, and his master replies that crossroads adventures earn no insulas, only broken heads. When the master describes Fierabras's balsam, the squire works out what the thing sells for and gives up the government.
Si eso hay -dijo Panza-, yo renuncio desde aquí el gobierno de la prometida ínsula, y no quiero otra cosa, en pago de mis muchos y buenos servicios, sino que vuestra merced me dé la receta de ese estremado licor, if that is so, said Panza, I renounce here and now the government of the promised insula, and want no other payment for my many good services than that your grace give me the recipe for that extraordinary liquor.
In chapter L of Part One, before the canon of Toledo, the master says he would give Sancho the county promised many days ago, if he did not fear Sancho lacks the skill to govern, and Sancho finds the way out: he has heard that there are men who take on the estates of lords as tenants, while the lord sits with his legs stretched out, enjoying the rent.
In Part Two the insula becomes a matter for debate at home. In chapter II of Part Two, the niece and the housekeeper bar the door to Sancho, and the niece asks whether an insula is something you eat.
sino de gobernar y regir mejor que cuatro ciudades y que cuatro alcaldes de corte, but to govern and rule better than four cities and four court magistrates.
In chapter IV of Part Two, the bachelor Sansón Carrasco hears him say he would not ask for the insula but would not refuse it if heaven sent it, and answers with the warning that Sancho's governorship is about to test: offices change customs, and once he sees himself a governor he might not recognize the mother who bore him.
Sancho nací, y Sancho pienso morir; pero si con todo esto, de buenas a buenas, sin mucha solicitud y sin mucho riesgo, me deparase el cielo alguna ínsula, o otra cosa semejante, no soy tan necio que la desechase, Sancho I was born, and Sancho I expect to die; but even so, if heaven should offer me some insula, or something like it, easily, without much effort or much risk, I am not so foolish as to turn it down.
In chapter XIII of Part Two, the Squire of the Wood describes the insula with the distrust of someone who has seen the prize up close.
los gobiernos insulanos no son todos de buena data. Algunos hay torcidos, algunos pobres, algunos malencónicos, y finalmente, el más erguido y bien dispuesto trae consigo una pesada carga de pensamientos y de incomodidades, que pone sobre sus hombros el desdichado que le cupo en suerte, not all insular governments are of good worth. Some are crooked, some poor, some melancholy, and finally the most upright and well-disposed carries a heavy load of thoughts and discomforts, which the unfortunate man who draws it by lot places on his shoulders.
In chapter XXVIII of Part Two, in the middle of a complaint against his master, Sancho counts the promise as part of his wages and makes it count for the weight it has for him.
debe de haber más de veinte años, tres días más a menos, it must be more than twenty years, three days more or less.
In chapter XLI of Part Two, astride the wooden horse, it is the duke who speaks of the insula and confirms it: it is neither movable nor fugitive, and the price he asks for it is that the squire go along with his master and see the adventure through.
la ínsula que yo os he prometido no es movible ni fugitiva: raíces tiene tan hondas, echadas en los abismos de la tierra, que no la arrancarán ni mudarán de donde está a tres tirones, the insula I have promised you is neither movable nor fugitive: it has roots so deep, sunk into the depths of the earth, that no three tugs will pull it up or move it from where it stands.
In chapter XLII of Part Two and chapter XLIII of Part Two, the master writes his advice on how to govern: know yourself, take virtue as the middle path, be merciful to the guilty, and do not load your speech with proverbs. In chapter XLV of Part Two, Sancho takes possession of Barataria, amid bells and absurd ceremonies, and the first thing he does is give back the "don" they put on his name.
Pues advertid, hermano -dijo Sancho-, que yo no tengo don, ni en todo mi linaje le ha habido: Sancho Panza me llaman a secas, y Sancho se llamó mi padre, y Sancho mi agüelo, y todos fueron Panzas, sin añadiduras de dones ni donas, then take note, brother, said Sancho, that I have no don, nor has there been one in all my lineage: they call me plain Sancho Panza, and my father was called Sancho, and my grandfather Sancho, and all were Panzas, with no additions of dons or doñas.
On the same day, the verdict of the staff with the ten escudos in its hollow, which Sancho himself proposes as proof of his judgment for governing a whole kingdom.
In chapter XLVII of Part Two, at a banquet from which the doctor Pedro Recio has each dish carried off one at a time, Sancho reduces government to what keeps him alive.
que oficio que no da de comer a su dueño no vale dos habas, what office does not feed its owner is not worth two beans.
In chapter LIII of Part Two, on the seventh night, after the mock assault that leaves him walled in between two large shields, he embraces his gray donkey in the stable and speaks of government as of a tower he has fallen from.
Venid vos acá, compañero mío y amigo mío, y conllevador de mis trabajos y miserias: cuando yo me avenía con vos y no tenía otros pensamientos que los que me daban los cuidados de remendar vuestros aparejos y de sustentar vuestro corpezuelo, dichosas eran mis horas, mis días y mis años; pero, después que os dejé y me subí sobre las torres de la ambición y de la soberbia, se me han entrado por el alma adentro mil miserias, mil trabajos y cuatro mil desasosiegos, come here, my companion and my friend, and bearer of my labors and miseries: when I got along with you and had no other thoughts than those the care of mending your gear and keeping your little body fed gave me, my hours, days, and years were happy; but after I left you and climbed up the towers of ambition and pride, a thousand miseries, a thousand troubles, and four thousand unrests have entered my soul.
As he leaves, he asks those around him for what the government never gave him.
dejadme volver a mi antigua libertad; dejadme que vaya a buscar la vida pasada, para que me resucite de esta muerte presente, let me return to my former freedom; let me go and seek the life I had before, so that it may raise me from this present death.
In chapter LV of Part Two, before the duke and duchess, after climbing out of the ditch, he sums up ten days like a bookkeeper's ledger: he entered the insula of Barataria naked, and naked he finds himself, neither losing nor gaining.
And in chapter LXXIV of Part Two, in his will, Don Quixote closes the promise: if, being mad, he gave Sancho the government of an insula, being sane he would give him that of a kingdom, and he asks his forgiveness for having led him into the error that there are knights-errant.
quiero que no se le haga cargo dellos, ni se le pida cuenta alguna, sino que si sobrare alguno, después de haberse pagado de lo que le debo, el restante sea suyo [...] y, si como estando yo loco fui parte para darle el gobierno de la ínsula, pudiera agora, estando cuerdo, darle el de un reino, se le diera, porque la sencillez de su condición y fidelidad de su trato lo merece [...] Perdóname, amigo, de la ocasión que te he dado de parecer loco como yo, haciéndote caer en el error en que yo he caído, de que hubo y hay caballeros andantes en el mundo, I want no account of them to be demanded of him, nor any reckoning asked; but if anything remains, after he has paid himself what I owe him, let the rest be his [...] and if, as I was mad, I helped give him the government of the insula, I could now, being sane, give him that of a kingdom, let it be given him, for the simplicity of his nature and the fidelity of his dealings deserve it [...] Forgive me, friend, for the occasion I have given you to seem mad like me, leading you into the error I have fallen into, that there were and are knights-errant in the world.
What It Means
The insula is the thread that keeps Sancho at his master's side, and the measure of how the two deal with the same hope. For Don Quixote it is a consequence of chivalry: the knight's squire receives a government, as in the books, and the text never shows the gentleman doubting for an instant that he can deliver it. For Sancho it is an office he wants to exercise well, with his feet on the ground: he does the sums of his wages, distrusts the advice of the Squire of the Wood, and answers his niece with the defense of someone who knows what he is talking about. What the dukes' government does is test that hope in the body: the squire judges, goes hungry, is attacked at night, and leaves saying he was not born for that.
Barataria's outcome gives reason to the squire and at the same time to the bachelor's warning. Do offices change customs? Sancho leaves without touching money, gives back the "don," and gets right the rulings that depend on seeing: the office does not change him, what changes him is seeing from within what his master promised from without. The insula that exists only in books and the insula that exists in the dukes' hands are two fantasies, and the second has the advantage of being something one can put down. Two readings: the dukes' hoax produced, against its intent, the only disillusionment in the book that is not defeat, since Sancho gives up the government of his own accord; or the government merely confirms that Sancho was already what he said he was, and the insula, instead of changing him, served the dukes to laugh at what he had always been.
Relationships
- The work: Don Quixote.
- Standard themes: Justice and law, Freedom and oppression.
- Themes in the work: Justice and law, Freedom and oppression.
- Characters: Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Sansón Carrasco, the duke and duchess.
- Nearby symbols: the inn, the other place the book gives the gentleman and the squire and then takes back, and books of chivalry, from which comes the rule that the squire receives a government.