Chapter IV - What happened to our knight when he left the inn . . .

Capítulo IV. De lo que le sucedió a nuestro caballero cuando salió de la venta.

Chapter IV. What happened to our knight when he left the inn.

Cervantes' subtle narrative powers are displayed in chapter 4.

Don Quijote rides away from the roadhouse in a frenzy of joyful anticipation. Having been dubbed a knight, he is ready to meet evil in whatever manifold forms evil might take.

The miscreant who runs the roadhouse and who invented and then presided at the dubbing ceremony, counseled the fledgling knight to look to his daily needs: 

• have you brought money with you? 

• what about a clean shirt? 

• what about ointments for the inevitable wounds you will suffer? 

• what about a squire to accompany you and look to your personal needs?

The advice is sound. DQ heads for home.  He must see to each of these needs - especially money and a clean shirt. There is in the neighborhood a laborer who would make a perfect squire.

Turning on the familiar path to DQ's modest hacienda, Rocinante needs no direction and trots into a fair gallop - "con tanta gana comenzó a caminar, que parecía que no ponía los pies en el suelo" - ". . . began trotting with such a will that his hooves seemed to fly over the ground."

Hearing a pleading voice off to one side, DQ turns his horse.

The voice "must" - "sin duda" -  be a call to arms.

"Estas voces, sin duda, son de algún menesteroso o menesterosa que ha menester mi favor y ayuda.

"These cries - without a doubt - are from some man or woman who needs help - who is to be aided by my favor and protection."

Well, yes. There is someone in a good deal of trouble. But sin duda ?? DQ is responding to his own vision of a simplified world, not to the ambiguities encountered in the world as it is.

A teenage boy is being whipped with a belt on his bare back by a powerful, deliberate man. Cervantes' storytelling leaves to the reader to decide whether the beaten boy is a thief who may deserve some degree of punishment:

"No lo haré otra vez, señor mío; por la pasión de Dios, que no lo haré otra vez, y yo prometo de tener de aquí adelante más cuidado con el hato".

"I won't ever do it again, sir, for the love of God, I won't do it again, and I promise from now on, to take better care of the flock." 

Hearing the cries of pain and pleading, DQ rides up, does not dismount, but challenges the abuser to mount his own steed, take up his own lance, and accept DQ's gentlemanly challenge, which will surely - according to the delusional DQ - lead to the defeat if not also the death of this coward, caught in the act of gravely abusing an Innocent.

"Descortés caballero, mal parece tomaros con quien defender no se puede. Subid sobre vuestro caballo, y tomad vuestra lanza (que también tenía una lanza arrimada a la encima adonde estaba arrendada la yegua) , que yo os haré conocer ser de cobardes lo que estáis haciendo."

"Discourteous knight! It ill befits you to take on someone who cannot defend himself. Mount your horse! Take up your lance! (for there was a lance leaning against the oak tree where the mare was tied) That I may make you know your behavior shows you to be a coward!" 

The farmer, intimidated by the armed and armoured man on horseback, answers that the boy is his hired shepherd and is both inattentive of the flock and a thief as well. To which DQ responds:

¿Miente, delante de mí, ruin villano? -dijo don Quijote-. Por el sol que nos alumbra, que estoy por pasaros de parte a parte con esta lanza: Pagadle luego sin más réplica; si no, por el Dios que nos rige, que os concluya y aniquile en este punto. Desatadlo luego."

"You would lie to my face, you dastardly miscreant! By the sun above us, I have a mind to slice you in two with this lance! Pay him at once, without any further backtalk. If not, by the God who reigns over us, I will put an end to you on the point of the lance. Untie him immediately!"

The encounter continues with more patter from the farmer and the boy, and DQ, and ends with DQ riding away contented with empty promises offered up. The abusive boss soon renews the whipping of the captive boy, whom DQ thinks he has saved by speechifying, and by issuing a call to the joust, which does not occur.

The speech from the mouth of the insane DQ, is an invocation of the medieval knightly paradigm of chivalry: 

• vindicate the innocent by way of a gentlemanly tilt of the lance.

Cervantes invokes the code of chivalric warfare in order to ridicule this code.

Is the pompous speech of DQ, before the tormentor of the whipped boy, intended to ridicule the fantasy of the chivalrous rules of engagement, which had been turned into romanticized, sentimental tales of a chimeral by-gone era?

You bet.

Is the delusional DQ, riding away from the scene of unrequited, ongoing pain - in the belief that he has redressed a grave wrong - is this a metaphor for the pointless pretension of pretend warfare?

Ditto.