Don Quixote dies at the end, as I recall. The Knight of Mirrors -- aka the bachelor Sampson Carasco -- challenges Don Quixote to a duel. Carasco wins, and demands that Don Quixote stop being a knight forever. Don Quixote honors his word. He goes home and swears off being a knight. The book ends a few pages later, after describing how miserable Don Quixote's last days / months were as Alonzo Quijano again. I think at one point his niece or Sancho tries to rouse him to action by telling him, "Come on! Let's go be knights again!" but he's too miserable anymore.
Like yeah he's cured of his madness, but that cure results in him dying.
Yeah, he falls into a deep kind of malaise I've always interpreted as intense embarrassment, then it gets so bad he dies of it. My renaissance lit professor in college told us Cervantes killed Quixote at the end so other authors would have a hard time writing and selling their own unofficial sequels (a thing that was common at the time with popular novels)
Don Quixote dies at the end, as I recall. The Knight of Mirrors -- aka the bachelor Sampson Carasco -- challenges Don Quixote to a duel. Carasco wins, and demands that Don Quixote stop being a knight forever. Don Quixote honors his word. He goes home and swears off being a knight. The book ends a few pages later, after describing how miserable Don Quixote's last days / months were as Alonzo Quijano again. I think at one point his niece or Sancho tries to rouse him to action by telling him, "Come on! Let's go be knights again!" but he's too miserable anymore.
Like yeah he's cured of his madness, but that cure results in him dying.
Yeah, he falls into a deep kind of malaise I've always interpreted as intense embarrassment, then it gets so bad he dies of it. My renaissance lit professor in college told us Cervantes killed Quixote at the end so other authors would have a hard time writing and selling their own unofficial sequels (a thing that was common at the time with popular novels)
IIRC The author published (under a pseudonym) a work where Don Quixote goes around beating up bad fanfiction authors.
Imagine getting paid to write about your OCs beating up other people’s shitty knock-off OCs lmfao