"By these words of his the travelers were able to satisfy themselves of Don Quixote's being out of his senses and of the form of madness that overmastered him" (Cervantes 52).
De Cervantes opens his story with a rather novel character. The self-christened Don Quixote is an eccentric man at best and I hesitate to label him as a protagonist in the traditional sense, despite his position in the novel clearly fitting that role. Though well educated in the legends and lore of the knights of the past, the knight-errant has little social understanding of the world he lives in, instead believing to be enveloped in a knight's legend, a knight's world. His vision of knighthood is also incredibly romanticized. Rather than as mercenaries as knights were in true history, Don Quixote envisions them as something much more idealistic: a yearner for a maiden and a righter of wrongs. However, this ideal clouds his perception of reality: he was convinced in one of his early forays that giants had been turned to windmills by a sorcerer's magic. His apparent insanity is instantly recognized by those whom he meets during his travels; the fanciful speech he speaks in being a dead giveaway. By seeking adventure, he also seeks conflict and makes it where there was none before. He intermittently attacks other travelers, often invoking the name of his Dulcinea of Toboso and accusing the target party of a crime that had not been committed. Evidently, Don Quixote is not on the side of any virtue and his story involves mishap after mishap, a fact he does not notice. As such, his decisions are heavily influenced by a naïveté stoked by the books of chivalry that kindled his interests in knighthood. Those very same books were the reason he set out for his second sally, as they burned and charred away.
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