Watch Your Step!

As you read the article “Some Kind of Hero,” you may have encountered some words that you don’t see often 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.

Don Quixote on horseback with a windmill in the background.

Don Quixote on horseback with two windmills in the background.

Don Quixote looking around at the camera with trees in the background.

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 click the question to check your answer.

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 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?

It’s easy to stumble over words you don’t quite recognize.

Question