Classics Summarized: Don Quixote

Thanks to Drunner64 for requesting this video!

Spain's most famous eccentric takes center stage in a comedy that SORT of manages to hold up in spite of the majority of its humor amounting to pop-culture references that make NO sense in our current cultural climate. Also this book is about 150% longer than it needs to be, and that's not even touching on the sequel!

MERCH LINKS:

Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!

[MrFishman]

Don Quixote was the Florida Man of his time.

[TheOneGuy]

Original Don Quixote: Literature includes too much fantasy, we need more reality.
Don Quixote Adaptations: Literature includes too much reality, we need more fantasy.

[Fishbiene]

Here's what I would love: a Don Quixote movie where Don Quixote talks to the audience but the rest of the characters just think he's crazy. Like Don Quixote would be in the middle of a monologue and then the camera would switch to another character watching him and wondering who he's talking to

[nanpuxle]

k, so im spanish and majoring in both spanish lit and english lit, and this semester i had a subject that was cervantes. thats it, 6 months studying the one guy. and lemme tell you, he was GENIUS. and out of my deep admiration for the guy, allow me to explain some things:

hes not actually as racist nor classist as you might think, he is rather commenting on the society he lived in. he was probably of jew descent and made fun of ppl who pride themselves in their "pure blood" o "cristianos viejos" as they were called. in part two of DQ, he has a moor character commenting on the expulsion of the moors and showcases how much of a tragedy the expulsion was for these ppl, even though he portrays it a bit as the character being "of the good ones" to make it more palatable for its censors. he also shows sancho as incredibly smart in his own right, even if he is illiterate and gullible at times. he also makes fun of nobles in the second part. A LOT. he actually shows sancho as much better suited for leadership and power positions than most nobles.

ALSO he really was ahead of its time regarding women, and this grew more and more during his life. he lived with two of his sisters, his daughter, his wife and his niece, surrounded by women by himself, and i think this made him see women as real people.

he had overall a very sad life and was never able to find his place in literary circles, he was blacklisted by authors more popular than he was. but he didnt publish the sequel out of spite, you can actually see in the second book when he found out about the seque, l bc he ingeniously introduces it in the fictional world, and DQ and sancho find out about this fake book written about them, and they even meet a character out of the book, which concedes that the quixote he meet must have been a fake. he also introduces the success of the first book in the second one, and characters recognize dq and sancho from the first book. its all very meta and cool. anyways i admire cervantes so fucking much and he was mostly a very noble, legendarily creative person. thats why he constantly introduces stories in the main narrative, bc he was so prolific and wrote so much he tried to place his stories wherever he could. he wrote "thank me not for what i have written, rather thank me for what i have not" bc he saw his creative flow as unstoppable and he found it very hard to keep himself from writing on and on (kinda how im doing now, lol)

also the short novels stop in the second book, or rather, they are woven into the story and dont feel as much as a distraction, bc he received criticism for this and tried to better his writing.

im gonna shut up now
k sorry
bye

[ozkul_arda]

I like how the happy ending to that tragic love story is happening in the inn while don quixote is fighting wine barrels upstairs.

[lmbusiness]

OH MY GOD. THEY WERE LITERALLY ARGUING ABOUT SHIPS. *ARGUING ABOUT

[riotintheair]

My favorite description of Don Quixote was from myths reimagined: "Don Quixote eats sanity and shits violence."

[ffnendhgrgd]

"I got severely beaten because you tried to free me!"
"You shall be avenged!"
"I feel like you're not listening."

[BlackEpyon]

I swear, this is all just Monty Python ahead of their time.

[MURPHYCHACHO]

I love how invested Red got in the love subplot.

"Hooray! Happy ending! ...oh wait, the book isn't about these people."

[cheezemonkeyeater]

BTW, between this and Journey to the West, this channel has done more to convince me I need to read some of the classics more than any college course ever did.

[johnmccrossan]

"this is why he hates women and was therefore yelling insults at his goat" I'm not sure why but this is the funniest sentence I've ever heard and I actually keep goats which for some reason makes it even better idk why

[spambaconeggspamspam]

first recorded instance of a murder hobo dnd character.

[landons]

The whole four-person love subplot just makes me think that Cervantes had an idea for a completely different novel but instead got lazy and stuffed it randomly in his satire novel as a two for the price of one deal.

Buy now and get a free windmill!

[rjeromef]

What’s really funny is that people started writing fanfics that missed the point of this book DURING Cervantes’ lifetime, so he wrote a sequel that ends with Don Quixote coming to his senses on his deathbed and telling everyone that he was crazy and shouldn’t have been taken seriously.

[maximaldinotrap]

Gotta love how Don Quixote's madness inadverdently causes other characters to have a happy ending. Also the other stuff is hilarious as hell.

[KaoriKino]

Cervantes was WAY ahead of his time. My professor described Don Quixote as "a post-modern novel written before modernism".

[stellariumhoshiiro]

Don Quixote: My job here is done!
Andres: But you didn't do anything!
[cue Don Quixote exitting dramatically]

[afishyfishh]

ah yes the actual Don Quixote, not the little gremlin with a lance of the same name

[Halo-lgrq]

Goat herder story in a nutshell. “Why are you here?” “I’m an incel” “No, we’re incels”