“Whether it was owing to
melancholy occasioned by the defeat he had suffered, or was simply, the will of
Heaven which had so ordained it, he was taken with a fever that kept him in bed
for a week, during which time his friends, the curate, the bachelor, and the
barber, visited him frequently, while Sancho Panza, his faithful squire, never
left his bedside.”
-Don
Quixote, Cervantes, 2346
Good
friends are hard to find, to be sure. And truly, Don Quixote found one when he
found Sancho Panza. Sancho stands by his friend loyally throughout the crazies
that Don Quixote continually subjects him to. Don Quixote thinks himself a
knight-errant, and pursues quests to prove himself true to that calling, not
unlike an early Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story
in the fact that he thinks himself a
Space Ranger, not, in fact, a toy.
But still, Sancho, and, later in
the movie, Woody stick by their delusional comrades. A quote describing this
very idea floating around Facebook for a minute a little while back says:
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail, but a
true friend will be sitting right next to you saying, ‘That was awesome!’
Early
in the book, Don Quixote, it would
seem that simple-minded Sancho knows no better than to follow the leader, so to
speak, in knightly pursuits. But as the book comes to a close, we see Sancho
overtake his master with wisdom. Still, he stands by his friend, until the very
end, despite Don Quixote’s many failings. Cervantes narrates that in Don
Quixote’s illness, his many friends visited (friends, that mind you did not
seem to really care about Don Quixote as a person, but rather the amusement he
provided in his insanity), but, in Sancho, he had one TRUE friend that did not
leave his side. This bore a striking resemblance to Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, especially in The Return of the King’s pivotal scene:
Frodo would not have survived—let
alone succeeded—without the help of his truest friend. And I think the same is
true for Don Quixote. Sancho served as a buffer to the madness consuming Don
Quixote, almost protecting him from himself.
Just
as Woody, Samwise, and Sancho, in good times and bad, true friends are there.
May we
all find our own Sancho, and may we strive to be someone else’s: this is my
charge.
Great connections! *Toy Story* and *The Lord of the Rings* are both drinking the Quixote cool-aid. Nice work.
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