Interpretation :: essays research papers

Humans are set apart from all other animals for peerless reason. We have the power of imagination and thus power to interpret what we read. Therefore, we can argue that the written word is the most meaningful of all types of communication. It is valid to presuppose that if ten people read a book and were asked to retell the book in their own words that wed hear ten different versions of the identical book. In todays society, our interpretations are feared. We might interpret anything contrary to the authors intentional meaning. The author could then possibly be nonresistant for any actions we take after reading his works. Don Quixote is one who consciously decides to interpret his books of chivalry as the right way of life and concurrently decides to sustain his own life in that manner. I remember reading that a certain Spanish horse . . . having broken his sword in battle, tore a great bough or tree branch from an oak(69). Since Don Quixote had read about this particular knigh t, he justifies it to himself that he too could also tear a limb from a tree and uses it as a makeshift lance. When Sancho asks if Don Quixote had any pain, he replies, I do not complain of the painbecause a knight errant is not allowed to complain of any wounds(69-70). Again, Don Quixote is going by a set of rules of chivalry that he obtained from his reading. At night, Don Quixote refuses to sleep just now thought about his Lady Dulcinea, to conform to what he had read in his books about knight errants spending many sleepless nights in the woodland and quit dwelling on the memory of their ladies(70). I do not believe that Don Quixote is mad, as some may say, but that he is only version what he has read to suit him. If Don Quixote were a real human in todays society his family could very well sue the publishers of the books that he read, claiming that the books drove him to insanity and should not have been published. However, if all written works were feared in that context, th en it is also a possible that all books are to be feared. This is shown when Don Quixotes niece helps a priest and a barber to burn Don Quixotes treasured books of chivalry. When the barber suggests that These do not deserve eager with the rest, because they do not and will not do the mischief those books of chivalry have done(61).