PRINT THE DELUSION:

Cervantes' Don Quixote tells the story of a man who becomes so obsessed by novels dealing with Knight-errants, (wandering Knights doing great deeds in the name of some unattainable beauty) that he decides to become one himself. The books are just fanciful romances but Quixote takes them as true histories, they "fit" with his mind, fulfill a need he has. He goes out into the world in the name of Dulcinea del Toboso, a simple country girl whom he reinvents in goddess-like perfection, to perform great deeds. [...]

[I]llusion, irrationality and emotion play vital roles in our lives. "If it is love, it is madness, if it isn't madness, it isn't love." That's true. Consider as well that at the very end of the second and last volume of Cervantes' masterpiece, when Don Quixote comes to his senses, and realizes that he's been acting under a delusion, he immediately dies. This makes me wonder if Cervantes was expressing an unspoken truth--that it's our illusions that keep us alive.

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