Don Quixote and Self Identity vs. Conformity

Don Quixote is a story that we can closely follow when it comes to the theories of self identity versus conformity. Don Quixote is based around a man who is middle-aged and decides to reinvent himself based off of the many pieces of literature he has read that features the good doings of knights. The feature of Alonzo Quixano deciding to reinvent himself into Don Quixote, and taking on Sancho Panza as his squire is a prime example of self-indentity in this text. Alonzo becomes bored with his own life, and feels it is somewhat plain, taking fate into his own hands to reinvent himself into a brave knight that rights the wrong among the people around him.

Although it seems as though Don Quixote is discovering his own self-identity by changing his identity to the public being that of a knight, like the ones he read about throughout his many books, it seems as though he is conforming to the characteristics that he has read about. while conforming to this new identity he has made along with his new name, he seems to have a warped perception of what knights truly do, and just how chivalrous they could be. “In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind.”  (Don Quixote)

The plot seems to show that although Don Quixote was a man obsessed with reinventing himself into a modern knight to do good throughout his travels, that this same man had a diluted idea of what kind of character he truly was due to the amount of stories he had saturated himself in about people of the knight stature. Although some might believe this was just a man trying to chase his dreams of becoming a knight, most believed this was a man driven mad to the point of him deciding to recreate himself in his literature's images. “One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.” (Don Quixote)

This is a perfect piece of literature to truly examine the ideas of self-identity versus conformity, because although Don Quixote was chasing his own self-identity, he still had some sort of conformity to the ideals that were delivered through the texts he read based on what a knight should be. Some of the people who surrounded him believed he was simply a man chasing a dream and fulfilling it, and others believed this was a man who was driven into madness based on the extreme ordinariness of his own life that he decided to reinvent himself into a conformed version of a knight.