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Part 2, Chapter 56
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 grows tired of his idle life in the castle and decides to take to the road. One morning he and Sancho gather his belongings and ride out into the courtyard, where they hear Altisidora sing a song that curses Quixote for ignoring her love - also for stealing her heart, three nightcaps, and two garters. Sancho confesses to taking the nightcaps and quickly returns them, and Altisidora realizes to her embarrassment that she herself is wearing the missing garters. Everyone says their goodbyes.
Altisidora’s performances mostly serve to debase Quixote’s ideas of romantic love. In that way, the episode is tragic. But it also has the cheerful absurdity of the squabbles at the inn. It is tragic in its effect on Quixote’s feelings, but it is comic in that it represents a more complete worldview, where absurdity, ugliness, and pettiness have their rightful places.
Themes
