The Strange Acceptance of Don Quixote's Madness

bleachededen · Wed Mar 31, 2010 1:37 pm

I'm not even a quarter way through the book (I don't think), but so far, it seems to me that other than a few rough encounters, mostly everyone Don Quixote meets accepts him amiably, even once they realize he is mad. Only one character so far has questioned him on chivalry, to test his madness (the character Vivaldo, whom he meets on the way to the shepard/scholar's burial), but is still treated calmly and with as much grace as if he were a knight errant.

This concept is interesting to me, because I have seen how people in our present society deal with people who are "mad," and this does not seem to apply to Don Quixote, at least with the strangers he meets on the road (and doesn't try to kill). No one has kicked him out of their home, and they listen to him speak, at length, about his knighthood and the treatment he deserves. Maybe some parts of chivalry have not died yet during this story, because goatherds and the like still open their homes and share their meals with passing strangers, even when they are known to be mad, something that most people in our current society would not do. I don't even leave my door unlocked when both my boyfriend and I are home and it's bright and sunny, if someone tries to ask me for directions, I shrug and pretend I don't know. I know that not everyone is like this, but a lot are, and I wanted to know what everyone else thought about the general acceptance of Don Quixote and his madness? Or do you not think he is being accepted? I'd like to know what everyone thinks, either way.

DWill · Thu Apr 01, 2010 7:41 pm

Apparently, in Cervantes' day there wouldn't have been anyone to call, as we would do today if we saw anyone acting this erratic and violent. But the inaction and apparent acceptance in the fiction might also mask a reality in the late 1500s in which the insane might have been locked up in deplorable conditions and, who knows, maybe even executed. So I'm saying I don't know how far we can go with conclusions about attitudes towards the insane judging by the mere fact that DQ remains at large and people listen to him. The fiction Cervantes wants to create relies on the Don being free to roam and to interact with people. He gets away with stuff that presumably would have gotten him arrested and imprisioned pretty fast.

Robert Tulip · Thu Apr 01, 2010 8:36 pm

The book is all about literary devices with a social message. The fact was, chivalric literature was wildly popular. MC is asking, what if someone with these attitudes actually turned up? It is about the anachronism of knight errantry in the modern world, that attitudes seemingly sane and reasonable in the fictional romance appear simply absurd.

I can't help thinking that the real biting message is that Christianity is absurd. People routinely claim that Christ was born of a virgin, was crucified and came back to life. In truth, this is just as absurd as any of the fantastic claims made by Don Quixote. This message would not have been lost on Cervantes' audience, sotto voce to avoid the tender mercies of the Inquisition.

DWill · Thu Apr 01, 2010 9:22 pm


	Robert Tulip wrote: The book is all about literary devices with a social message. The fact was, chivalric literature was wildly popular. MC is asking, what if someone with these attitudes actually turned up? It is about the anachronism of knight errantry in the modern world, that attitudes seemingly sane and reasonable in the fictional romance appear simply absurd. I can't help thinking that the real biting message is that Christianity is absurd. People routinely claim that Christ was born of a virgin, was crucified and came back to life. In truth, this is just as absurd as any of the fantastic claims made by Don Quixote. This message would not have been lost on Cervantes' audience, sotto voce to avoid the tender mercies of the Inquisition.

I don't know if I follow you, Robert, about the attitudes in the romances being "sane and reasonable." They weren't, were they? Everyone except DQ, presumably, can separate fiction fantasy from reality.

I have a different view of how the audience would have taken the Don's delusions. The effect would be rather to lead them away from the trail, to divert their attention from considering Christianity to be likewise absurd. And the piety that the Don regularly expresses might have been a bit of a saving grace for the audience.

Robert Tulip · Thu Apr 01, 2010 9:28 pm


	DWill wrote: I don't know if I follow you, Robert, about the attitudes in the romances being "sane and reasonable." They weren't, were they? Everyone except DQ, presumably, can separate fiction fantasy from reality. I have a different view of how the audience would have taken the Don's delusions. The effect would be rather to lead them away from the trail, to divert their attention from considering Christianity to be likewise absurd. And the piety that the Don regularly expresses might have been a bit of a saving grace for the audience.

"Seemingly" sane and reasonable, just within the constructed universe of knight errantry. The world of romance literature has its own rules, which DQ seeks to follow punctiliously. Just as 'everyone' knows that romance is imaginary bullshit, MC invites the reader to ask what other bizarre ideas (hint - the Bible) are equally anachronistic and insane, where people have a strange inability, rather like the Man of La Mancha, to separate fact from fiction.

WildCityWoman · Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:50 am

I can't imagine a madman descending upon a business place/a meeting place, killing off a few people, because he 'thought' they might be 'bad guys', and being accepted, just because he was visibly insane.

Try to imagine yourself sitting in McDonald's; you're eating your McWhatever, drinking your 'dishwater', and a guy comes barging in and shoots a few people - because he thinks they're bad guys.

Then the manager comes out and gives him a brekkie on the house - turns to the other customers and says, hey! He can't help it, y'know - he's crazy.

Even if there was no telephone (landline or cell) to call somebody in authority - wouldn't everybody jump the guy, hold him down till somebody got the cops in?

For people who like to discuss metaphorics in a novel, symbolism, etc., a field day could be had with this one. I wouldn't agree with them, but I'd could imagine them saying this was 'symbolic' of something. What would that be - that the 'shooter' got away with it, because he was mad? That would be symbolic of how justice is carried out when dealing with crazies?

It certainly would be today - my daughter once got hit in the face by a street stemmer (beggar). When she talked to the police, they told her they have to treat people like that 'differently'.

Or maybe the symbolism would refer to the way things are 'ignored', to how we let people get away with things, just to keep the peace.

WildCityWoman · Sun Apr 11, 2010 9:51 am

And it isn't the 'madness' that's being accepted, it's the consequences of the madness the people are accepting, BECAUSE OF the madness.

Veneer · Sun Apr 11, 2010 10:05 am


	WildCityWoman wrote: It certainly would be today - my daughter once got hit in the face by a street stemmer (beggar). When she talked to the police, they told her they have to treat people like that 'differently'. Or maybe the symbolism would refer to the way things are 'ignored', to how we let people get away with things, just to keep the peace.

My experience with the criminal justice system in "minor" crime is that if they can't fine the hell of someone, they don't want bothered. How is a beggar going to pay a fine? Call him looney and tell the victim that their hands are tied.

bleachededen · Sun Apr 11, 2010 1:22 pm

It costs money to commit those people to either jail or an institution, and the places they would be sent would only "deal with them" until they are deemed mentally stable, even if that is only short term, and they would then discharge them from the jail or hospital as "healthy," and since they are homeless or extremely poor, they wouldn't be able to continue the routine that kept them stable and would soon enough again be on the street, begging and "acting crazy."

There really isn't a whole lot that can be done for these people, and I'm sorry to anyone who has been hurt by anyone like them, but on a whole, people with mental illness do need to be treated differently, because in a lot of cases, they truly can't control their actions and have no other course of treatment open to them. It's ugly, but sadly, true.

Don Quixote is a rare case, however, because anyone who converses with him can see that he is very intelligent and only insane when it comes to matters of chivalry. These people have no choice but to let him "do his thing" because they don't want to get killed or hurt themselves, and there are many instances when the Don gets a beating he truly deserves and the culprits get away, one of whom does tell the Holy Brotherhood (police) of what he's done, and a warrant is issued for his immediate arrest. When this happens, the "sane" people around him don't allow him to be taken in because for one, his insanity amuses them and they want to see what happens (which makes them just as loathsome in my eyes), and second they want to get him home to try to "cure" him, which is, of course, impossible, but since they know him and are somehow understanding of his madness, they want to cure him themselves instead of letting him be taken by the Holy Brotherhood, possibly to save the Brotherhood some injury at Quixote's hand, and also to save the Don himself from torture.

I do think their fascination with his type of madness is what lends them to wanting to try a cure, because they easily come up with ways to fool him, playing into his own madness. This was the kind of strangeness I was talking about when I started this thread, because no one in this day and age would treat anyone with a mental illness this way, no matter how "peculiar" we thought the illness was.

Robert Tulip · Tue Apr 13, 2010 7:52 pm

Reflecting on the "Michael Jackson Death Hoax" claims, it occurs to me that analysis of crackpottery has a long pedigree. The celebrated Man of La Mancha is the undisputable king of the crackpots.

There is so much genuinely crazy material out there. Don Quixote sets the template with his rational discussion of topics other than chivalry, the internal coherence of his ideas (as long as no one tries to validate them against experience), and the sense that things which appear harmless at first glance (pretending to be a knight in shining armour) actually carry extreme risk of physical harm to himself and others. His brilliant strategem is to blame the evil enchanter who makes everyone think he is crazy.

I blame religion to a large extent for its widespread solemn promotion of ridiculous claims. Religion sets the context for other people to say, well if religions believe crazy things then so can I. It makes it somehow socially acceptable to be a crackpot, as long as it is confined within the religious context and doesn't affect normal life. The trouble is there is always spillover.

I recently read a comment from an astronomer that they continually receive crackpot theories in the mail which they just have to throw in the bin. One guy cites a 'crackpot index' that he uses to assess websites. Claims about the evil conspiracy of the establishment preventing emergence of brilliant new discoveries figure for many points on the index.

Genuine inventors and innovators are routinely accused of being crackpots, 'tilting at windmills', etc. People with new ideas have to deal with the ingrained cynicism of the establishment, and can find it difficult to get any forum for discussion.

Randy Kadish · Thu Apr 22, 2010 11:38 am

Don Quixote's madness is a great topic for debate. I believe the Don's mental state has to be put in context. Is he mad? After all, he believes in an ideal. He believes in doing good, in creating a better world for his fellow man. Is that mad? Besides, Einstein saw the world differently from everyone else. Was he mad?

And what about so many other characters in the book, characters who don't believe in any ideals, who don't strive to help others? Are they sane?

Intestingly, when DQ loses his idealism, his unique view of the world, he cannot live. When Sancho, who sees the world as it supposedly really is, gets a chance to govern, he does so wisely - until he can't handle the pressure, so to speak, and flees. Is that sanity?

In short, can a person be sane without ideals?

Randy

Robert Tulip · Thu Apr 22, 2010 3:24 pm

Hi Randy, great questions, and glad to see Don Quixote back in the "View Active Topics" list.

There is an old saying 'without vision the people perish'. I think that Cervantes is celebrating Don Quixote's sense of vision, but offering a word of caution about overly bold speculation.

Cervantes is equally mocking the ordinary people around Don Quixote for their lack of vision. They only accept as real what they can hold and touch, or what they are instructed by authorities is real. Don Quixote, by contrast, has a fabulous systematic cosmology, building castles in the air, imagining the world of his dreams is real.

This contrast touches on big issues for psychology, describing tendencies which are equally dangerous when taken to excess in opposite directions. The cynical critics would argue that no rational speculation is possible or worthwhile, despite the fact that such speculation is at the base of imaginative genius and social change. Such cynicism is deathly, as it shuts down the intelligence that is required for innovation.

And of course Don Quixote himself provides some lessons regarding the perils of taking solipsistic speculation too seriously...

Einstein is a paradoxical character. He is the epitome of the 'mad scientist' with those photos of his wild hair, but also the epitome of total sanity. I think a point from Einstein's amazing 1905 papers on relativity is that you have to dare to follow your dreams, but also listen carefully to other people and build your dream in collaboration with others in case your dreams turn into a fantasy, and you find you are tilting at windmills.

Robert Tulip

giselle · Fri Apr 30, 2010 1:54 pm


	Robert Tulip wrote: There is an old saying 'without vision the people perish'. I think that Cervantes is celebrating Don Quixote's sense of vision, but offering a word of caution about overly bold speculation. Cervantes is equally mocking the ordinary people around Don Quixote for their lack of vision. They only accept as real what they can hold and touch, or what they are instructed by authorities is real. Don Quixote, by contrast, has a fabulous systematic cosmology, building castles in the air, imagining the world of his dreams is real. This contrast touches on big issues for psychology, describing tendencies which are equally dangerous when taken to excess in opposite directions. The cynical critics would argue that no rational speculation is possible or worthwhile, despite the fact that such speculation is at the base of imaginative genius and social change. Such cynicism is deathly, as it shuts down the intelligence that is required for innovation. Robert Tulip

I've read only the first few chapters of Don Quixote but the madness theme is already front and center. I appreciate the comments here about the other side of madness, connected with imagination, creativity and innovativeness. And I can imagine that Cervantes used his imagination to survive his incarceration. We might also ask 'how do the mad see the world'? Do they see rational people all about, and themselves as irrational, or do they see madness and mad people everywhere therefore feeling that they are the sane ones within an altered reality world? I'll be interested to see if Don Quixote realizes he is mad.

Although not related to madness, I want to add that Cervantes stresses a strong sense of place, that is, the place a person is from is a significant part of them, which is an important tradition in some cultures today. In rapidly changing times, perhaps in 'mad' times, holding onto this sense of place and identity can be useful element of personal foundation.

Randy Kadish · Sat May 01, 2010 9:20 am

Robert,
Well said. Great discussion everyone.
Randy

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