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Essay / The Concept of Freedom in the Servants' Novel Don Quixote every discomfort is lodged and every mournful noise has its abode" (41). But if it is conceived in an iron age with limited religious, social and intellectual freedoms as the product of Cervantes' poverty and deprivation, Don Quixote is liberates through his capacity for transformation, first of his will and imagination, then of his reason. Alongside this is the parallel story of the castellan's own pilgrimage towards personal freedom. Cervantes uses the characters of Don Quixote. and Sancho Panza to make his case for freedom in literature and society, and when that is not possible, in the individual Say No to Plagiarism Get a Custom Essay on “Why The. violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayDon Quixote can be read not as an “invective against books of chivalry” but as an invective against the abuse of literature (46). At the beginning of the first part, Don Quixote has "stumbled upon the strangest imagination that ever entered the mind of a madman", the one which impels him to take up arms as a knight-errant and to venturing out into the world, “righting all manner of wrongs” (59). He is enslaved to a chivalric fiction, although it is a fiction of his own narration: he chooses what he sees, transforming inns into castles, girls into ladies-in-waiting and giants into windmills. To a fault, Don Quixote is irreverent not only towards the constraints of society but also towards its demands; thus, his freedom only develops as his idealism begins to decline in the second part. Here, Cervantes continues to manipulate the motif of conflicting authorship and character duality to establish his quarrel between reality and fantasy. As Don Quixote begins to recognize that his life is turning into a staged presentation of himself, his challenge grows. He shows less willingness to serve for the pleasure of others, the dukes, duchesses and Don Antonios of the world. As he writes in his letter to Sancho Panza, “as far as the problem is concerned, I must conform to my profession rather than to their pleasure” (895). In a barely concealed assertion of Cervantes' freedom and authorial command, Don Quixote acts in defiance of the actions described in Avellaneda's false suite, which brought the knight to Zaragoza. Don Quixote proclaims: "It is for this reason that I will not set foot in Zaragoza, and thus the falsehood of this new historian will be exposed to the eyes of the world and humanity will be convinced that I am not the Don Quixote whose he spoke. speaks” (953). Don Quixote asserts his freedom by refusing to simply be a character proposed by another, thus losing his own identity. However, at this point he is not yet truly free but only a character proposed by himself. It is in his death, when all illusion frees him, that Don Quixote's freedom reaches its highest form. He dies like his own master, who, “although defeated by another, nevertheless defeated himself” (1038). It is not the invention of the “Knight of the White Moon” that ultimately frees Don Quixote but rather his own spirit; he dies renouncing his title of knight-errant and with his judgment “clear and unhindered” (1045). Should we therefore consider the Don's journey simply as one that takes him from the slavery of a life in an idyllic past to the freedom of a "free" spirit? Cervantes seems to suggest the opposite, by wearing hisfinal judgment on Don Quixote through Sansn Carrasco. , who writes in the epitaph of the hero's tomb: He valued the world with little value And was a scarecrow in the eyes of men But had the chance in his time to live as a fool and die as a wise man (1049). the death of a wise man is an act of Don Quixote's free will; it is his immense fortune, in an iron age which constrains ideas, to have lived and died both. The novel takes the knight from an imaginative freedom that "placed little value on the world" to a liberated and rational reality. Cervantes believes that the two types of freedom embodied by Don Quixote, that of imagination and that of reason, have value for the reader who claims his life as his own. Earlier in the novel, Sansn tells the knight that “his life did not belong to him, but to all those who needed him to protect them in their misfortunes”554. But in his defiant life and defiant death, while those around him hesitate to abandon him and end the charades, Don Quixote proves that his life is his own, both as a knight in the face sad and as Alonso Quixano the Good. He is the sole author as a knight and the sole savior as Alonso. But the novel is not only the romance of a strong and individual character, Don Quixote, who affirms the possibility of freedom in a restrictive environment. In Cervantes' treatment of the theme of freedom, there are many layers that support and articulate the others. Although Cervantes states that he explicitly aims to subvert "the ill-founded fabric of these books of chivalry" through his satire of the genre, he attempts to reconcile this with his belief that literature can be liberating for the reader (47). accomplished not only through its account of Don Quixote as an imaginative and liberated figure, but also through Sancho Panza, who discovers his freedom along the way and forces us to reflect on ourselves. As Sancho Panza explains in the first part, Cervantes describes him as a "hard-working man...with very little spirit in the palace", a "poor man" who is forced to play the role of Don's squire Quixote (95). Yet even as Sancho exposes him, his subsequent development is foreshadowed by the image Cervantes gives us of Sancho astride “his ass like a patriarch” (96). The image at this point in the novel is comical, but should not be dismissed as it foreshadows Sancho's decision to seize the autonomous power of his own, albeit humble, domain. This decision is symbolically represented by Sancho abandoning his governorship and returning to Dapple. , “the friend and partner of [his] labors and troubles” (909). As Sancho says: “Make way, gentlemen, and let me return to my former freedom. Let me go in search of the life I left and resurrect from this present death” (909). Sancho prefers to “rest under a shady oak in summer and wrap himself in strong sheepskin in winter, as he pleases, rather than lie down, with the slavery of a government, in Dutch sheets” (910 ). . The squire recognizes the sweet chore of governing himself. If he follows Don Quixote now, it will not be out of ambition, but out of “his sweet will”; because, as he says to the squire of the Knight of the Woods, "love him as I love the shells of my heart, and I cannot invent a way to leave him, whatever stupid things he does " (613). Sancho's association with the Don has not only led him to understand his own personal freedom, but it also gives him some of the imaginative freedom that the knight fiercely demonstrates. Sancho is no longer the "poor spirit", in his ingenuity, deceives his master in the adventure of the fulling hammersand later transforms a peasant girl into Lady Dulcinea by invoking the knight's enchantment panacea. When Ricote questions the possibility of Sancho being governor of his island by telling him: “Hush, Sancho, the islands are in the sea; there are none on the continent”, Sancho replies: “Why not? » (917). In this single statement, Sancho incorporates both his master's defiance and his insistence on the sovereignty of his own will. But Sancho's pilgrimage is not simply a pilgrimage toward self-awareness. It also encompasses Cervantes' subtle criticism of his times, a time of oppressive class structures and limited freedom of expression. In the first part, Cervantes presents a disturbing episode of the flogging of the servant André which remains unresolved and aggravated by the involvement of Don Quixote. It is a dark portrait of both the destructive potential of Don Quixote's illusion and the incorrigibility of the provincial social structure. The knight's renunciation of his disillusionment solves the first problem, but what about the second? Cervantes offers a solution in the second part, when Don Quixote attempts to whip Sancho in order to disenchant Dulcinea. The possibility of physical violence in this scene is reminiscent of the violence suffered by Andrés. Sancho dominates the Don, who cries: "How, traitor! Do you dare to raise your hand against your master and against the hand that feeds you?" Sancho replies: "I do not mark or make king. I only defend myself, I who am my lord. If you promise me, master, that you will leave me alone and that you will not try to whip me, I will free you." (956). In this parable of role reversal, Cervantes engages in a kind of wish fulfillment where the limits of freedom “here the manufactured norms of chivalry errant but also the norms of a hierarchical society” disintegrate. While Sancho questions authority and asserts his own basic rights, Cervantes questions the limits of human freedom in society while admitting that these limits exist. The suppression of speech is a secondary target of Cervantes' social commentary articulated through Sancho. Don Quixote said to Sancho: "You must refrain and curb your desire to talk so much with me in the future, because never in any of the countless books of chivalry that I have read have I found a squire who spoke to his master as much as you do to yours” (196) But although Don Quixote considers his squire “a pervert of good language”, Sancho recognizes that his words, even lacking in precision and mixed with proverbs, are not. worse than the “nonsense” his master spouts about knights-errant and enchantments (661, 693). “I know you, Sancho,” replied Don Quixote, “so I pay no attention to your words. “ “Neither do I pay attention to yours,” said Sancho, “even if you beat me or kill me. me for those of whom I have spoken or intend to speak if you do not correct and repair yours" (693). Sancho's reluctance to compromise his freedom of speech leaves the reader of Don Quixotes an enduring awareness and appreciation of Sancho's speech in all its particularities Because the squire's words persist, the series of exchanges between master and squire on the question of speech is not only humorous, but testifies to the. triumph of speech over a force that threatens to suppress it, a force far from being as restrictive as the literary censorship of the Spanish Inquisition but evocative of it. Throughout the novel, Sancho develops an awareness of his own. value and its autonomy, circumvents the master-servant relationship and argues in favor of freedom of expression Cervantes presents the..
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