Don Volixote And Don Quixote - 926 Words

During the 16th century, Miguel de Cervantes served the Spanish Armada and was attacked and taken captive by pirates. He was enslaved for five years and was finally ransomed by his family. This served as fuel for the first novel in history, Don Quixote, which mocks and satirizes the knights and aristocracy of the time due to their idealistic nature. A century later, Voltiare, a french enlightenment thinker, wrote Candide to destroy the notion of Optimistic thinking and show the ineffectiveness and irrational traditions nobles had in the 17th century and does so through numerous instances of irony and satire throughout the novel. Although the protagonists and ideals of each text are disparate, comparably, both Cervantes and Voltaire mocks†¦show more content†¦Cervantes makes it so that no one, but Sancho, understands Don Quixote. While Don Quixote also does not understand his surroundings and genuinely thinks that this reality of his chivalric stories of knights and adventur e is real; creating the idea that the nobility are quite foolish and blind. The famous scene of him when â€Å"he charged at Rocinante fullest gallop and fell upon the first mill that stood in front of him; but as he drove his lance-point into the sail†¦Ã¢â‚¬  is a great example of how Cervantes uses satire to make fun of the knights at the time, implying that this nobility and honor knights had was built off of their foolishness and quixotic nature. And in â€Å"Candide†, Voltaire views the theory of optimism as extremely foolish since it prevents individuals from making any morally right or realistic decisions; making Candide and Pangloss in the story see the world as â€Å"the best of all possible worlds.† As a result of this optimism, when horrible things such as rape and murder occur, they do not perceive how immoral those things are because it seems to serve a greater purpose beyond their understanding. Voltaire uses