All right, I'll be off the Don Quixote blogs here in a second. But I noticed today a very interesting parallel; Donny Q. and Sancho P. are in many ways reminiscent (though Cervantes, assuredly, came first) of Harry and Lloyd in "Dumb and Dumber." They are two innocent, likable guys who only real crime is the overall lack of knowledge of the real, working world. They are unemployed, see the world as something far different from what it truly is, and are living their lives in accordance to what the world seems to be like to them.
While Sancho Panza may be the smartest of the bunch, he still is faulted for following so insane a man, and eventually believing with similar fervor the chivalrous didactic reasoning that pervades poor Don's reality. While the modern movie characters prove to be dissimilar (they don't have the wherewithall to understand the reality of the world, living in obliviousness, in a truer sense that Mr. Q), they still tend to conform their actions to the events they assume are unfolding.
When assaulted and thrown asunder by a complacent windmill, Don Quixote insists his cruel tormentors, be they necromancer or a gang of rogue enchanters, had transmogrified the giants to windmills. When Harry and Lloyd are told by a bus of scantily-clad women they're seeking two oil boys to join them on tour, the two point them in direction of the nearest town, their absolute logic of the reality being that the women could not have meant them. While Don (and the increasingly convinced Sancho) is guilty of the sin of illusion and misinterpretation of reality, Harry and Lloyd are guilty of sheer lack of sense of the world.
While Sancho Panza may be the smartest of the bunch, he still is faulted for following so insane a man, and eventually believing with similar fervor the chivalrous didactic reasoning that pervades poor Don's reality. While the modern movie characters prove to be dissimilar (they don't have the wherewithall to understand the reality of the world, living in obliviousness, in a truer sense that Mr. Q), they still tend to conform their actions to the events they assume are unfolding.
When assaulted and thrown asunder by a complacent windmill, Don Quixote insists his cruel tormentors, be they necromancer or a gang of rogue enchanters, had transmogrified the giants to windmills. When Harry and Lloyd are told by a bus of scantily-clad women they're seeking two oil boys to join them on tour, the two point them in direction of the nearest town, their absolute logic of the reality being that the women could not have meant them. While Don (and the increasingly convinced Sancho) is guilty of the sin of illusion and misinterpretation of reality, Harry and Lloyd are guilty of sheer lack of sense of the world.
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