Interpretation

Humans are set apart from all other animals for one reason. We have the power of imagination and thus power to interpret what we read. Therefore, we can argue that the written word is the most meaningful of all types of communication. It is valid to say that if ten people read a book and were asked to retell the book in their own words that we’d hear ten different versions of the same book. In today’s society, our interpretations are feared. We might interpret anything contrary to the author’s intentional meaning. The author could then possibly be liable for any actions we take after reading his works. Don Quixote is one who consciously decides to interpret his books of chivalry as the right way of life and concurrently decides to live his own life in that manner. “I remember reading that a certain Spanish knight . . . having broken his sword in battle, tore a great bough or limb from an oak”(69). Since Don Quixote had read about this particular knight, he justifies it to himself that he too could also tear a limb from a tree and uses it as a makeshift lance. When Sancho asks if Don Quixote had any pain, he replies, “I do not complain of the pain…because a knight errant is not allowed to complain of any wounds”(69-70). Again, Don Quixote is going by a set of rules of chivalry that he obtained from his reading. At night, Don Quixote refuses to sleep “but thought about his Lady Dulcinea, to conform to what he had read in his books about knight errants spending many sleepless nights in the woodland and desert dwelling on the memory of their ladies”(70). I do not believe that Don Quixote is mad, as some may say, but that he is only interpreting what he has read to suit him. If Don Quixote were a real human in today’s society his family could very well sue the publishers of the books that he read, claiming that the books drove him to insanity and should not have been published. However, if all written works were feared in that context, then it is also a possible that all books are to be feared. This is shown when Don Quixote’s niece helps a priest and a barber to burn Don Quixote’s treasured books of chivalry. When the barber suggests that “These do not deserve burning with the rest, because they do not and will not do the mischief those books of chivalry have done”(61).