In the Prologue of Don Quixote, Cervantes presents his protagonist as a "dry, withered, capricious son... precisely the one who could be generated in a prison, where every hardship is lodged and every dismal noise has its home" (41). But if conceived in an Iron Age characterized by limited religious, social and intellectual freedoms as a product of Cervantes' poverty and deprivation, Don Quixote liberates himself through his capacity for transformation, first of his will and imagination and then of his reason. Alongside this is the parallel tale of the squire's pilgrimage towards personal freedom. Cervantes uses the characters Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to advance his thesis favor of freedom in literature and society and, when this is not possible, in the individual. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an Original Essay Don Quixote can be read not as a "invective against books of chivalry" but as an invective against the abuse of literature (46). As Part I opens, Don Quixote has "stumbled upon the strangest fantasy that ever entered the brain of a madman," one that drives him to take up arms as a knight errant and venture out into the world, "righting all manner of wrongs " (59). He is a slave to a chivalric fiction, although this is a fiction of his own narrative: he chooses what he sees, transforming inns into castles, maidens into ladies-in-waiting, and giants into windmills. To the point of guilt, Don Quixote is irreverent not only towards the constraints of society but also its demands; thus, his freedom only develops as his idealism begins to wane in Part II. Here, Cervantes continues to manipulate the motif of authorial conflict and character duality to establish his conflict between reality and fantasy. As Don Quixote begins to recognize that his life is turning into a stage presentation of himself, his challenge grows. He shows less willingness to serve for the enjoyment of others, for the Dukes, Duchesses and Don Antonios of the world. As he writes in the letter to Sancho Panza, "when it comes down to it, I must indulge my profession rather than their pleasure" (895). In a slightly hidden affirmation of Cervantes' freedom and authorial command, Don Quixote acts in defiance of the actions established in Avellaneda's false retinue, which brought the knight to Zaragoza. Don Quixote proclaims: "For this reason I will not set foot in Zaragoza, and thus the falsification of this new historian will be exposed to the eyes of the world, and humanity will be convinced that I am not the Don Quixote of whom he spoke." speaks" (953). Don Quixote affirms his freedom by refusing to be simply a character proposed by another, thus losing his own identity. However, at this point, he is not yet truly free, but only a character proposed by himself. It is in his death, when every illusion frees him, that Don Quixote's freedom reaches its highest form. He dies as his own master, who, "although defeated by another, nevertheless conquered himself" (1038). It is not the artifice of the "Knight of the White Moon" that ultimately frees Don Quixote, but rather his own mind; he dies by renouncing his knight-errantry and with his "clear and free" judgment (1045). of the Don must be seen simply as that which takes him from the slavery of an idyllic past to the freedom of an "unfettered" mind, Cervantes seems to suggest otherwise, expressing his final judgment on Don Quixote through the mouthpiece of Sansn Carrasco. , which he writes in the epitaph for thehero's tomb: He considered the world a small prize and was a bogeyman in the eyes of men, but he was fortunate at his age to live like a fool and die like a sage (1049). the death of a sage are Don Quixote's acts of free will; it is his immense fortune, in an iron age that limits ideas, to have both lived and died. The novel takes the knight from an imaginative freedom that "considered the world of little value" to a liberated and rational reality. Cervantes believes that both types of freedom embodied by Don Quixote, of imagination and reason, have value for the reader in claiming his life as his own. At the beginning of the novel Sansn tells the knight that "his life did not belong to him, but to all those who needed his protection in their misfortunes"554). But in his defiant life and in his defiant death, when those around him hesitate to abandon him and put an end to the charades, Don Quixote proves that his life belongs to himself, both as Knight of the Sad Figure and as Alonso Quixano the Good. He is its only author as a knight and its only savior as Alonso. But the novel is not just the love story of a strong individual character, Don Quixote, who affirms the possibility of freedom in a constraining environment. In Cervantes' treatment of the theme of freedom there are many layers that support and articulate the others. Although Cervantes professes the explicit goal of overthrowing "the ill-based fabric of these books of chivalry" through his satire of the genre, he tries to reconcile this with his belief that literature can be liberating for the reader (47). realized not only through his tale of Don Quixote as an imaginatively liberated figure, but also through Sancho Panza, who discovers his freedom along the way and forces us to reflect on ours. As Sancho Panza lays out in Part One, Cervantes describes him as a "worker...with very little spirit in his head," a "poor monster" who is forced to play the role of Don Quixote's squire (95). Yet, just as Sancho lays out, his later development is prefigured by the image Cervantes gives us of Sancho astride "his ass like a patriarch" (96). The image at this point in the novel is comical, but should not be dismissed because it foreshadows Sancho's move to seize autonomous governance of his own, albeit humble, domain. This move is symbolically represented by Sancho abandoning his governorship and returning to Dapple. , "the friend and companion of [his] toils and troubles" (909). As Sancho says: "Make way, gentlemen, and let me return to my ancient freedom. Let me go in search of the life I have left, and rise from this present death" (909). Sancho would rather "rest under an oak shade in summer, and wrap [himself] in a hard sheepskin in winter, at [his] sweet will, than lie down, with the bondage of a government, in sheets of 'Holland' (910) . The squire recognizes the sweet effort of governing himself. If he now follows Don Quixote, it will not be out of ambition, but out of "his sweet will"; for, as he says to the Knight of the Wood's squire, "love him as I love the clams of my heart, and I cannot invent a way to leave him, no matter what foolishness he does" (613) Sancho's association with the Don not only it has led him to understand his own personal freedom, but it gives him something of the imaginative freedom that the knight proudly displays. No longer the "poor monster", Sancho in his ingenuity deceives his master in the adventure of the fulling hammers and later transforms a peasant girl into Lady Dulcinea by invoking the panacea of ​​the knight's enchantment. When Ricote questions the possibility thatSancho has the governorship of his island telling him: "Shut up, Sancho, the islands are in the sea; there are none on the mainland", Sancho replies: "Why not?" (917). In this single statement, Sancho incorporates both his master's defiance and his insistence on the sovereignty of his own will. But Sancho's pilgrimage is not simply one towards self-awareness. It also includes Cervantes' subtle critique of his time, an era of oppressive class structures and limited language. In the first part, Cervantes presents the disturbing episode of the flogging of the servant Andrs, left unresolved and aggravated by the involvement of Don Quixote. This is a dark portrait of both the destructive potential of Don Quixote's illusion and the incorrigibility of the provincial social structure. The knight's renunciation of his disillusionment solves the first problem, but what about the second? Cervantes offers some solutions in Part II, when Don Quixote attempts to whip Sancho to disenchant Dulcinea. The possibility of physical violence in this scene is reminiscent of the violence suffered by Andrs. Sancho overpowers the Don, who shouts: "What, traitor! Dare you raise a hand against your master and against the hand that feeds you?" Sancho responds: "I do not brand or make a king. I only defend myself, who am my master. If you promise me, master, that you will leave me alone and will not try to whip me, I will free you" (956). In this parable of role reversal, Cervantes indulges in a kind of wish fulfillment in which the limits of freedom "here the invented norms of the knight errant but also the norms of a hierarchical society" disintegrate. While Sancho questions authority and asserts one's fundamental rights, Cervantes questions the limits to human freedom in society even as he admits that these limits exist. The suppression of speech is a secondary objective of Cervantes' social commentary articulated through Sancho. Don Quixote tells Sancho, "you must abstain and restrain your desire for much chatter with me in the future, for never in any of the innumerable books of chivalry that I have read have I found a squire who spoke to his master as much as you." do to yours" (196). But although Don Quixote considers his squire "a perverter of good language," Sancho recognizes that his words, even when they lack precision and are laced with proverbs, are no worse than the "nonsense" that the his master pronounces upon errant knights and spells. (661, 693). you do not correct and fix your own" (693). Sancho's reluctance to compromise his freedom of speech leaves the reader of Don Quixote with a lasting awareness and appreciation for Sancho's speech in all its idiosyncrasies. Because the squire's words persist, the series of exchanges between master and squire on the question of speech are not merely entertaining, but testify to the triumph of the word over a force that threatens to suppress it, a force not so restrictive as literary censorship. of the Spanish Inquisition but suggests it. Over the course of the novel, Sancho develops an awareness of his own value and autonomy, circumvents the master-servant relationship, and defends freedom of speech. Cervantes presents Sancho's journey to freedom with the bittersweet desire that this could be the case for every "poor man" (95). Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are complementary characters who together express Cervantes' commitment to the cause of freedom, both in society and in the environment. literature, where ideas should have free rein. Don Quixote's journey shows that both the imagination and the mind are liberating "if so.