Don Quixote – one of the greatest literary works of all time. It is widely considered the first modern novel, having laid the groundwork for all Western literature. It was written in the early 17th century by the Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes, who is regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language. Cervantes led an adventurous life, working as an assistant to a Catholic cardinal, serving in the Spanish navy and being captured and held by pirates for five years. These experiences no doubt had an influence on his storytelling.
Cervantes uses a literary device known as “metafiction”, where he is telling stories within a story. In doing so he often makes references to the texts he’s reading from and the texts that are missing. This is done to draw the readers in, believing that these are true stories that are reading. If you’ve ever seen the movie Fargo, you might recall that it begins with text on the screen informing the viewer that this is a true story. It wasn’t, and the movie’s creators later admitted that. It’s likely that they took this idea from Don Quixote as a way of creating a sense of realism for their audiences.
Part 1
The book is divided into two parts that were published a decade apart. Part 1 is mostly comical, telling stories of a middle aged man named Alonso Quixano from the La Mancha region of central Spain, who has read too many stories of chivalry. 
Having lost touch with reality after reading endless stories of knights in shining armor, he imagines himself to be a knight and assumes the name “Don Quixote”. He imagines the nearby farm girl as his lady love Dulcinea, names his tired old horse Rocinante, puts on an old suit of armor, and begins his adventures. After making a nuisance of himself at an inn full of prostitutes that he believes to be a castle staffed with fair maidens, he encounters a young man tied to a tree where he is being beaten by his master. The master says that the boy won’t do his job and the boy says that he hasn’t been paid. Don Quixote takes the side of the boy and tells the man to pay him what he owes him. The man’s response is essentially “I promise you he’s going to get what’s coming to him”. Satisfied that he has stopped this terrible injustice, he resumes his journey and encounters some men who he believes to have insulted Dulcinea. In defending her honor he attacks them only to be left for dead on the side of the road. A peasant recognizes him and takes him home where he recovers. While he is recuperating most of his books on chivalry are burned by those closest to him in an effort to discourage him in his dangerous fantasy.
Don Quixote then takes on an attendant or “squire” named Sancho Panza who travels throughout the country with him in adventures. Don Quixote attacks windmills that he believes to be evil giants, seeks to free a damsel in distress who is in reality just a woman in a carriage travelling with a group of friars, and basically just seeks to save a world that doesn’t appreciate his efforts as he is repeatedly getting beaten up.
Part 2
Part 2 is darker in tone than Part 1, and assumes that the reader is familiar with Part 1. It also presents the characters from Part 1 as being aware of the fact that Spaniards have read it and are familiar with them. As a result, Don Quixote are repeatedly subjected to ridicule and cruel jokes, including a woman who has supposedly died for his love sitting up in a casket and laughing at him for thinking that anybody would die for the likes of a man like him. Eventually Don Quixote falls ill and Sancho Panza takes him home to his loved ones who now resort to encouraging his fantasies in order to give him hope and keep him alive. But Alonso Quixano is resigned to the fact that the fantasies weren’t real and even stipulates in his will that his niece not marry a man who believes in these stories. He now accepts that it was all a waste of time, and having abandoned his belief in the tales of chivalry and chastity, he dies.
Although there are different views on what the author was really saying in Don Quixote, it is believed that Cervantes was writing in opposition to views advanced by the nobility that imposed limitations on the common people based on their social status. Man aspires to greatness, and if you take that away you take away hope with it. People aren’t meant to live in the fantasies of virtue forced on them by the elites. They’re meant to live according to their own perceptions of virtue and valor, without being beholden to the king or the state. Even if some consider you insane to pursue your dreams, it’s crazier to abandon those dreams in settling for the expectations of society.