Don Quixote

Alonso Quixano is the protagonist of the novel and the title character. He is a thin unremarkable man and part of the lower ranks of the Spanish nobility. As he approaches 50 years old, he suffers from an identity crisis. He becomes bored and unsatisfied with life in his house, and he wishes to become a knight, just like the knights errant he has read about in the books in his library. Quixano abandons his old name and gives himself a name more befitting a knight, fully embracing the identity of Don Quixote de La Mancha. He decides he will go out into the world on an adventure and spread the ideals of chivalry as practiced by the knights in his beloved books. His new identity is a complete fabrication. He invents his new name and title as well as reinventing his horse and a local peasant woman to become characters in his new fictitious life. Quixote’s embrace of chivalry is a challenge to set identities. He shows how identities are entirely made by humans, and they can be made again and again. By the end of the novel, he has fully embraced his identity as Don Quixote, The Knight of the Sorrowful Face.