Don Quixote

What Is Don Quixote About?

Alonso Quixano, a minor nobleman from La Mancha, has read so many romances about knights and their adventures that he goes mad. He renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," dons a suit of rusty armor, mounts a broken-down horse he calls Rocinante, and rides out to right wrongs and defend the helpless.

He recruits a local farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire — promising him the governorship of an island. Together they stumble through Spain, with Don Quixote interpreting everything through the lens of chivalric romance: windmills become giants, inns become castles, peasant girls become noble ladies.

The novel's genius lies in the interplay between the two characters. Quixote is mad but noble; Sancho is sane but gradually drawn into his master's vision. By the end, each has changed the other. The question the novel asks is never fully resolved: is it better to see the world as it is, or as it ought to be?

Why Don Quixote Still Matters

Cervantes invented something new — a long prose fiction that felt like real life, with characters who grow and change, who contradict themselves, who are simultaneously ridiculous and admirable. Every novelist since is in his debt.

• The birth of the novel. Don Quixote is the ancestor of every modern novel, from Jane Austen to Dostoevsky to Tolkien.
• Idealism vs. realism. The central tension of the book — should we see the world as it is or as we wish it to be? — is one every student must confront.
• The power of stories. Quixote is driven mad by books, but the novel itself is a book about the power of narrative to shape reality.
• Compassion for human folly. Cervantes laughs at his hero but never despises him. The novel teaches a generous, humane way of looking at human weakness.

Why Classical Schools Teach It

Don Quixote appears on virtually every Great Books reading list, from St. John's College to the Well-Trained Mind. It's typically taught in the rhetoric stage (9th–12th grade), when students can appreciate its layered irony and moral complexity.

Reading Don Quixote teaches students to:

• Engage with sustained, complex narrative across hundreds of pages
• Analyze unreliable perspectives and shifting points of view
• Wrestle with the relationship between fiction and reality
• Understand the origins of the novel as a literary form

At Saints Classical Academy, Don Quixote is part of our integrated humanities curriculum, read alongside Renaissance history and Latin.

Which Translation Should You Read?

• Edith Grossman — The modern standard. Elegant, lively, faithful to Cervantes' humor and rhythm.
• John Rutherford (Penguin) — Excellent and very readable, with helpful notes.
• Samuel Putnam — A classic mid-20th-century translation, still widely used in classrooms.
• John Ormsby — Available free on Project Gutenberg. Older but accurate.