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Essay / The Knight - 938
Don Quixote is a very long novel, but its basic plot is quite simple. A certain middle-aged gentleman named Alonso Quixano has read so many romantic stories about medieval knights that he loses his mind and imagines that he is really a knight. He also imagines that he is in love with a princess named Dulcinea, actually a local girl who has never paid him any attention. Changing his name to Don Quixote of La Mancha, he dons a rusty old suit of armor and sets out in search of adventure. In a certain inn, which he mistakes for a castle, Don Quixote asks the innkeeper to officially name him a knight. The innkeeper accepts, just to please his crazy guest. Later, after mistaking a group of merchants for knights, the Don challenges them to fight and ends up in much worse shape. A passing neighbor takes him home, where his niece, his housekeeper, and two friends – the local priest and a barber named Nicholas – burn his books to try to bring him to his senses. Don Quixote is always determined to go on an adventure. He convinces a local worker, Sancho Panza, to accompany him as his “squire”. Don Quixote's crazy ravings land him and Sancho in a lot of trouble. He mistakes a group of windmills for giants. He organizes a funeral procession for the ghosts. He even “captures” a brass bowl, which he believes is a valuable helmet. Finally, he meets a young man, Cardenio, driven mad by an unhappy love affair. The Don decides that he will become a hermit, like his new friend. Meanwhile, Don Quixote's friends, the priest and the barber, have hatched a plan to lure him home. They ask a girl named Dorothea to pretend to be Princess Micomicona. In this disguise, Dorothy begs Don Quixote to follow her into her kingdom and kill an ogre who has usurped her late father's throne. The Don, his friends, Cardenio and Dorothea all travel together until they reach the same inn where the Don was "knighted". Here Cardenio and Dorothea reunite with their lost loves, Lucinda and Don Ferdinand.Yes NoYes NoYes NoThe priest now decides that the only way to bring Don Quixote home is to take him there in a cage.