Don Quixote and Lost in La Mancha

Don Quixote and Lost in La Mancha

The narrative of Don Quixote and the film Lost in La Mancha stresses and illustrates author Miguel De Cervantes, and film directors’ Louis Pepe and Keith Lutton’s ideals and values of the fantasy world and a human’s ability to be “passionately insane.” Cervantes original novel has been appropriated to reflect societies cultural values that have been preserved in a relatively compatible manner. The context and significance of these texts can be most easily portrayed within the strong relationship of the two leading characters, superstitions and language/film devices. These techniques all arise the questionable implications of the human condition, and the theme of man against society.

It is of high importance, to recognize the cultural context of the texts, and how the concepts came to be. It is imperative for the readers to have a brief understanding of Miguel De Cervantes’s military life style and his enlistment in army at the tender age of twenty-one. He fought against Turkey at the sea followed by Italy on the land. Many of Cervantes war circumstances, can be reflected in Don Quixote. His mistrust and bias judgments towards foreign and alien countries is evident within his text; an example of this is when the priest and barber unquestionably burn all the Italian books in Quixote’s household, believing they are detrimental to a human’s conscious.   In a sense, Quixote is almost a historical novel recounting the scenario of the Spanish and English war; these can be referred throughout in chapter XXXIX. To live a chivalrous lifestyle, was of high importance in Cervantes era; it represented the protection of the weak, respect towards women and the heroic performance of good deeds.
Miguel Cervantes proves that a strong imagination is necessary to lead a fulfilling life. He saw life how it should be through his ideals rather than the reality of it. The context of Lost in La Mancha can be most easily sighted within the central...