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Part 2, Chapter 39
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Don Quixote, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Truth and Lies
Literature, Realism, and Idealism
Madness and Sanity
Intention and Consequence
Self-Invention, Class Identity, and Social Change
Summary
Analysis
Quixote vows to help the duennas and the petrified lovers. The Duenna explains that Malambruno promised to send a magical wooden horse to carry the knight to the faraway kingdom, the one described in a famous chivalry tale. The horse will arrive a half-hour after midnight, after the duenna sends the giant a special signal. The horse’s name is Clavileño the Swift, it can carry two riders, and it is operated by a wooden peg.
Just as the first part of the story echoes Ovid, the second part echoes Homer’s Iliad, in which a hollow wooden horse is used to invade the city of Troy. It is a symbol of cunning and deceit. In The Iliad, the kingdom that the wooden horse invades is destroyed; here, the kingdom invaded is a magical kingdom, meant to represent Quixote’s fantasies.
Themes
