Chapter LX
Sick of waiting for Dulcinea’s disenchantment, Don Quixote
tells Sancho he has decided to whip Sancho himself. The two argue.
Sancho knocks Don Quixote down and, before letting him up again, makes
Don Quixote swear he will not whip him. Don Quixote and Sancho then
meet a band of thieves who robs them, although the thieves return
the money at the command of their leader, Roque Guinart. Roque recognizes
Don Quixote from the stories about him and says he never believed
him to be real before now.
After a brief encounter with a distressed young woman
who has killed her lover out of mistaken jealousy, Roque allows
a group of wealthy individuals to keep most of their money, even
giving some to two poor pilgrims traveling with them. Roque then
kills one of his thieves for grumbling about his generosity. Roque
sends a letter to a friend in Barcelona to alert him to Don Quixote’s
imminent arrival.
Analysis: Chapters LIV–LX
Don Quixote’s encounter with the two men who have read
the sequel to the First Part of the novel further blurs the line
between fiction and reality. By this point, Don Quixote has begun
to accept reality: he finally sees an inn as merely an inn and accepts
that he must pay for his accommodations. Yet his return to reality
comes just after the bulls crush him for standing his ground, an
act that raises questions about his sanity. Still, he displays an
ability to distinguish between the accurate First Part and the counterfeit
sequel, refusing to read the sequel and disparaging its falsehood.
Adding to the confusion is Don Quixote’s refusal, in Chapter LIX,
to go to Saragossa. At the end of the First Part, Cervantes tells
us that the history indicates that Don Quixote goes to Saragossa
on his next expedition. Now, however, it seems that Cervantes was
either wrong or lying, since Don Quixote disobeys the very text
in which his exploits are recounted.
As the novel draws toward its close, the status of the
knight-errant declines, replaced by the virtue and strength of the
peasant. When Sancho overpowers Don Quixote, Don Quixote’s defeat
and Sancho’s evolution are nearly complete. Sancho the squire, who
at the beginning of the novel would never even consider challenging his
master’s word, now physically knocks Don Quixote down without even
apologizing, and even forces Don Quixote to swear an oath to him.
Sancho’s power and importance in the novel eclipse Don Quixote’s
literally trampled stature. At the same time, the chivalric qualities
to which Don Quixote adheres so fiercely for so long have begun
to lose their hold on him as he becomes a more practical and realistic—and
compassionate and caring—human being.
The story of Tosilos, the lackey whom the Duke forces
to fight Don Quixote for the Duke’s amusement, is a glaring example
of the Duke’s and Duchess’s cruelty. The two combatants fight exclusively for
the entertainment of two wealthy people who in their boredom are
amused by the travails of the Countess and her dishonored daughter.
Though the Duke takes steps to ensure that neither Tosilos nor Don
Quixote will get hurt during the battle, he does not tell them that
he has done so, because he wants to them to sweat and suffer as
though they were in a real battle. Later, when we learn that Tosilos
has been locked up for his refusal to fight and that Doña Rodriguez’s
daughter has been sent to a convent, the despicable nature of the
Duke and Duchess becomes even clearer. Moreover, while the Duke
and Duchess outwardly express grief for Sancho’s troubled governorship,
Cervantes writes about this grief with irony and doubts its sincerity.
Though the Duke and Duchess claim to be upset at Sancho’s “signs
of having been badly bruised and worse treated,” it is clear that
Sancho does not merely have “signs” of bruises but that he is bruised.
The Duke and Duchess meddle with their servants’ lives merely for
the sake of meddling, showing a clear enjoyment of power and a lack
of compassion for others.
