It’s easy to stumble over words you don’t quite recognize.
As you read the article “Some Kind of Hero,” you may have encountered some words that you don’t often see in what you
choose to read. If a word is really unfamiliar, it can slow you down or even cause you to misunderstand the author’s
point. Don Quixote is such an important figure in literature, though, that you’ll hear his name again and
again―both in school and outside of school.
To make sure you understand who Don Quixote is and why he’s important, take another look at some of the paragraphs in
“Some Kind of Hero.” The questions below each passage help you apply strategies for adding new words to your
vocabulary while also understanding more of the author’s message. Try to answer each question on your own before you
click the question to check your answer.
Slide: 1 / 4
Published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote tells the story of a Spanish
nobleman who reads too many romantic stories of chivalry, or knightly honor,
and loses his mind. Don Quixote comes to believe the fictional stories are literally true.
Moreover, he fancies himself a knight like the heroes of those tales.
Determined to seek adventure, he puts on an old suit of armor and climbs onto his tired
workhorse Rocinante. He also enlists a simple, down-to-earth peasant named Sancho Panza as his
reluctant squire. Together they set out on a comical series of would-be heroic
quests. They battle a windmill “dragon,” fight imaginary villains, and “rescue” a damsel who
isn’t actually in distress.
the phrase “or knightly honor”
considers or thinks
comic, which refers to an idea or
creative work that is funny
Don Quixote was a wildly popular story in Cervantes’ time, and it is still a beloved
classic of Spanish literature. Some consider it to be the first and even the best modern novel
ever written. It’s not surprising, then, that Don Quixote’s misadventures have
become a part not only of Spanish culture but of world culture. Along with the expression
“battling windmills,” Cervantes’ novel has given us the English word quixotic, which
means “romantic or idealistic to a degree that isn’t practical.”
mis-, a prefix that means “not”
ideal
Cervantes made fun of a certain type of story―the chivalric stories and
poems that Don Quixote read and believed. The “conceits,” or figurative
comparisons, of these writings are so complicated that they drive Don Quixote mad.
Cervantes quotes imaginary passages of overblown chivalric writing like
this one:
The reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so
weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty.
If that sentence had you scratching your head and saying “Huh?” then you had exactly the reaction
Cervantes intended.
It makes chivalry into an
adjective.
Adjectives are used to describe nouns, such as “stories and poems.”
the phrase “figurative comparisons”
writing that is too complicated to make any
real sense
The ovillejo starts with three two-line stanzas. The first line asks a question, and the
second gives a short answer. Here are the first three stanzas of an ovillejo from
Don Quixote:
What makes my quest of happiness seem vain? Disdain.
What
bids me to abandon hope of ease? Jealousies.
What holds my heart in anguish of
suspense? Absence.
It shows what stanzas―or sections of
poems―look like on
the page.
Question
What “word attack” strategies did you use to answer the questions above?
context clues, separating a word into its parts, identifying a
word’s part of speech
