The “play” Of Don Quixote And Sancho Panza

Christopher Brown Literary Study II: Prose Fiction Dr. Waterman Ward 8 February 2009 The “Play” of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza The humor of Don Quixote is ironic, created by the juxtaposition of expectation and reality—aspirations and dashed hopes—mixed together in discrete but shared quantities through Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Those two protagonists escape stereotyping by continually usurping the other’s role, preventing a conclusive circumscription of either character. Even in the end, Cervantes preserves ambivalence in the reader toward Sancho and Quixote; the close of the book does not raise one of the two above the other; rather, the amalgamation of Sancho-Quixote remains inseparable though heterogenous. What facilitates this freedom is the interplay between the two, both of whom have amorphous or shifting centers, that elude prediction. Jacques Derrida, in his essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” posits a mode of literary criticism called “decentering,” which in basic terms claims that that all creators of a “structure” assign an integral and inherently unavoidable “center” to their work. This center “permits the play of elements inside the total form” while “[closing] off the play which it opens up and makes possible,” thus inducing the analytical reader to decenter the structure in order to allow the “play” more freedom (278-80). Structuralism asserts that the culmination of the “totality” of the structure is precisely at the constraining center (which is “both in the structure and outside it”) (279). But Derrida the deconstructionist claims, instead, that the gestalt of the “totality” (both center and play) is fundamentally both greater and elsewhere than the original center (279). The titular “play” is precisely wherein lies the gestalt; a rejection of center, and of centers in general, must precede the post-structuralist interpretation of any literary work. This particular aspect of Derrida’s essay resembles Mikhail Bakhtin’s “polyphony,” but extends the concept monomaniacally to encircle semiology, epistemology, phenomenology, and exegesis. With this reading,† the interchanges between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza become the decentered content of Don Quixote; it is transgressive to consider them finite characters with definite ends. For example, at the castle of the duke and duchess, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are separated. During the other’s absence, each unhappily achieves their ultimate goal. Quixote becomes the high-adventuring, appreciated knight that he has been striving to become, whose knighthood is confirmed by a real duke and duchess in a real castle, despite which he insists upon leaving. Sancho, similarly, becomes the governor of a respectable province that he manages admirably, but he abdicates in order to return to Don Quixote. Each wants to be back on the road, striving for exactly what he currently possesses; a repudiation of his goal out of preference for its pursuit. The duke gives to each what their centers seem to be directed toward, but this direct confrontation succeeds only in revealing the evanescence of those centers. Derrida quotes Montaigne at the beginning of his essay: “We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things” (278). Decentering is the advantaging of method over content; the reflexion of the interpretation of interpretations reveals much more that the interpretation of things can miss entirely by reaching an end and thinking it is conclusive. If Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are evaluated as characters that are the sum of their actions, the result is two † Derrida’s “play” extends more widely to the interaction of structures on a macroscopic level as well, such as between distinct books, not just characters, but the microcosmic aspect of the theory is equally viable and better suited to the format of this essay.

Brown 2 delusive semblances of centers. Instead, their exchanges ought to be the focus of inspection, because freedom and dynamism occurs in the play of words freed of centers and in the interaction between characters whose telic identities are recognized as being, ultimately, liquid. Works Referenced Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Edith Grossman. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2003. Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. 278-293.