Don Quixote is the main character of a novel written in 1605 by Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes. According to Wikipedia, “Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and “the first great novel of world literature”.” Don Quixote was a widely read literary classic. Don Quixote was very popular novel for a long time, but it is not really read today, many people probably would not even read the whole thing unless instructed to.

Here is my short summary of the book:

So basically, this old man named Don Quixote loves to read and he reads a whole lot about knights, and the knighthood, and castles, pretty much a lot about what I like to call the “medieval age”, you may have heard of it or not. Anyway, this man eventually loses his mind and declares that he wants to be a knight just like the ones in his books. So he grabs some old armor that has been in his family for a long time, polishes it up, cleans up a sword, he takes an oath of knighthood, and declares that he is a knight. Throughout most of the rest of the book, he travels the land, looking for trouble that he can fix in a “knightly” way, and since knights and the knighthood are “dead”, people laugh at him, they make fun of him. In many cases, Don Quixote gets himself into trouble. In this one case, he is on his old horse, walking along the road when he comes across these people that he mistakes for magicians. So he charges them, his horse falls trapping him under his horse, and he gets beat up and his sword gets smashed. So this goes on for a long time, until he decides to return home and become a shepherd for a year. People encourage him thinking that he will return to his senses. A little while after he gets home when he wakes up in bed, he says he does not feel good, so a doctor is brought in and tells people that Don Quixote is dying. While on his deathbed, he comes to his senses and takes another oath, an oath of repentance. He dies a few days later.

The two oaths that Don Quixote takes completely contradict each other. In his oath of knighthood, he swears to protect the weak and uphold justice, but he does a lot of questionable things because he lost his sanity. In many cases, he does the opposite of what he swore to do, and becomes, in many cases, dangerous and violent.

In Don Quixote’s oath of repentance, he is on his deathbed, and he comes to his senses. In his oath, he realizes his sins, he repents of his sins, and he dies a very happy, new man.