Sunday, November 20, 2005

Chapter 3 Don Quixote

I'm thinking that I don't want to make a separate blog entry for every chapter, but truly, this reading is so complex that my eyes tend to glaze over before I reach the end of the sentence. I need to incorporate comprehension strategies I've learned from strategies that Work and other books. I'm using post it notes so that I don't have to write in the margins of this fine book.

Chapter 3, zoom in on the landlord, a wag. What's a wag? It's someone who cheats widows (cold), ruins maidens (nasty), and swindles minors (takes candy from babies). He has been around and has street smarts. Naturally he is quick to pick up on the fact that Quixote is crackers, but the landlord decides to humor him and agrees to do the official dubbing, since the errant knight thinks he's a governor. In fact Quixote thinks he's hanging with royalty but in fact his fellow companions at the inn are wenches and a pig gelder. Meantime, Quixote's gear is still on the watering tank and he's wandering around in his shirt and helmet with the green ribbons (how's that for an image?). Along comes some carrier who wants to give his team of horses water, so he moves the armor off the watering tank. Quixote sees this and clocks the guy with his lance. He doesn't smite him dead, just unconscious. After this Quixote is all full of himself and when another carrier comes and commits the same crime of touching the armor, he smites him, too. The other guests start to freak out and rain stones on the half cracked knight. The landlord can't wait to get rid of this nut case and dubs him quickly and unceremoniously in a field and Quixote starts speechifying again, but the landlord can't wait to get rid of him before the rest of the guests tear the inn apart. He doesn't even charge him for the night, he just shows him the door and tells him Godspeed, which is medieval for get lost.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Sara!
For a while now I can listen for a half hour every day to selected parts of the newest translation of Don Quijote on the Swedish Radio, just before noon CET (Central European Time), and I do. That is some coincidence. Here it is:
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/P1/program/artikel.asp?ProgramID=1111&artikel=738858.

All the best!