Don Quixote 1: Existential Hero

Sometimes banging your head against a wall is a good thing (isn't it?)

A few months ago, a fellow professor and friend sighed one morning that she felt like Sisyphus. It just so happened that the kids and I were on a Man of La Mancha kick at the time. (It’s always been one of my favorite musicals.) As I parked the car when I got to work, the climactic “The Impossible Dream” song was playing. A realization struck me. I laughed and texted my friend, a great fan of musical theater, “I just realized that ‘The Impossible Dream’ is a different spin on [the Sisyphus] theme. Maybe you should think of yourself instead as Don Quixote.” I got the laughing/crying emoji back (you know the one).

Sisyphus, according to the Greek myth, is the man who angers the gods enough to receive the eternal punishment of rolling a boulder up a mountain in Hades every day, only to have it roll back down each night. He has come to symbolize fruitless labor, enough that in English the word Sisyphean has entered our vocabulary to describe pointless tasks.

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Philosopher and novelist Albert Camus found existentialist themes in Sisyphus’ story, which he retold at the end of his extended essay The Myth of Sisyphus, calling Sisyphus an “absurd hero.” On Camus’ interpretation, this means something probably different from what might come to mind from those words as we’d use them in ordinary conversation.

For existentialists, “the Absurd” is (roughly) the clash between humanity’s longing and search for meaning, and universe’s inherent lack of it. Sisyphus is condemned to utterly futile labor—which, as many existentialists understand it, is the human condition. We’re constantly engaging in a flurry of activity, all for what? In the cosmic scheme of things, anything we are or do is vanishingly insignificant.

Camus imagines Sisyphus, however, internally giving the gods the finger by throwing his whole being into his task. I like to think of him saying, if not out loud, than certainly to himself, “F--- you, Zeus, I’m gonna be the best damn rock pusher you’ve ever seen!” (It makes for a dramatic classroom moment.) This is the sense in which he’s an Absurd hero: he fully embraces his life as a rock pusher. If you’re stuck with Absurdity, might as well dive in.

In Camus’ hands, this is a lesson in rebellion against the Absurd human condition, a lesson in making meaning for yourself.¹ It’s edgy and sharp. In Man of La Mancha,² however, the lesson looks a little different, rounder and shinier.

Don Quixote leaves his home in the persona of a medieval knight on a quest to right all the world’s wrongs. He sees windmills as threatening giants, a shaving basin as a golden helmet, an inn as a castle, and the inn’s serving girl and prostitute Aldonza as the idealized object of chivalrous love, the lady Dulcinea. Everyone around him (including his friend Sancho, who acts as squire) can see that he’s mad, and yet some of them play along: there is something appealing in his illusions. Aldonza questions Don Quixote on why he does what he does, and his reply is “The Impossible Dream”:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
And to love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march, march into Hell
For that Heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage

To reach the unreachable
The unreachable
The unreachable star

To paraphrase Camus: you have at this point grasped that Don Quixote is the Absurd hero. (He’s also absurd in the everyday, small-‘a’ sense of the word.) He throws his entire being into the obviously impossible quest to right all wrongs—and he knows it’s impossible, but he does it anyway. Both of them succeed in making meaning out of something inherently meaningless.

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But here’s where I see some small but significant differences between Don Quixote and Sisyphus. First, his story is not dark and rebellious; it’s bright and optimstic. Second, it’s catching. Sisyphus is fundamentally alone, but Don Quixote pulls people into his world. Aldonza is perhaps the biggest skeptic, because the reality of her life has hardened her so that she can’t afford illusions. She has trouble grasping the motivations of an idealist like Don Quixote. She questions Sancho about why he follows his “master,” and the only reply he can come up with turns out to be “I like him / I really like him.” He finds that he can’t give any reasons other than this. In the end, Don Quixote’s vision of a better world convinces even Aldonza to see herself differently, embracing her identity as Dulcinea and giving her a dignity she never thought she had. Just as he hopes, Don Quixote’s illusions do some real good. The world is better for one man having reached for the unreachable stars.

As a natural optimist by temperament, I love this story and its lesson. But we might ask whether I really should embrace it as anything other than an uplifting story, fun to enjoy when I need to set aside reality and escape for a bit. Are our illusions a good thing?

Stay tuned. I have some thoughts on this.

1. I have plenty to say about this—it’s one of my favorite class discussions—but we’ll save it for another time.

2. I stick to the musical because I never did manage to finish Don Quixote the novel. (Cut me some slack, I was a teenager. I’d probably enjoy it more now, and I’ve been thinking I should pick it up again and give it another shot.)