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Part 2, Chapter 64
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Don Quixote, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth and Lies
Literature, Realism, and Idealism
Madness and Sanity
Intention and Consequence
Self-Invention, Class Identity, and Social Change
Summary
Analysis
Don Antonio follows the Knight of the White Moon to his hotel room to find out his true identity. The Knight tells him that he is the student Sansón Carrasco, and he has tricked Quixote into returning to the village so that he might regain his sanity. Don Antonio scolds the student for trying to cure such a wonderful madness, and predicts that no cure is possible. Meanwhile, Don Quixote stays in bed for six days, bruised and depressed. Don Antonio announces that the renegade has returned with Don Gaspar; the news only make Quixote sad, because it means he won’t get to rescue the boy himself.
We have compared Don Antonio’s trickery to that of the Duke and Duchess. But it seems that his attitude toward Quixote’s fantasies is quite different, and more respectful; although he considers his fantasies a kind of madness, it is a wonderful madness. In this, he resembles the poet Don Lorenzo. He brings up a familiar question: what is Quixote’s madness? It is a certain kind of personhood, or is it an incurable illness?
Themes
Don Gaspar joyfully reunites with Ana Félix. Don Antonio offers to pull some strings and obtain permission for Ana and Ricote to stay in Spain, but Ricote declines the favor, explaining that the King of Spain was right to cleanse the country so completely. In a few days Sancho and Quixote leave Barcelona and begin travelling back to their village.
Once again, Cervantes makes a Morisco support the Expulsion of the Moriscos – a puzzling and paradoxical move. Through Ricote, Cervantes acknowledges that the brutal expulsion did serve to protect Spain from a real threat of internal enemies.
Themes
