Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Don Quixote are both tales of chivalry and knighthood, but the protagonists have differences and the authors view them differently. The main difference between Don Quixote and Gawain is that Quixote is a man of ideals and book-learned chivalry and knighthood. Gawain, on the other hand, is a man of action and represents the real thing when it comes to knights. The authors also view them differently. Quixote is viewed as an idealist in a world that is hardly ideal. His becomes disillusioned and renounces his idealism based on external circumstances. Gawain, on the other hand, is treated as the repository of all chivalrous qualities and he ends in humiliation and self-defeat, appalled at his lack of being able to live up to his own virtuous expectations. This analysis will demonstrate the similarities and differences between the two protagonists of Sir Gawain… and Don Quixote by analyzing various dialogue and action within the novels.
The biggest difference between Don Quixote and Sir Gawain is that, even though they both become disillusioned with their ideals of knighthood and chivalry, Don Quixote does from the external world, whereas Sir Gawain is disillusioned by his lack of inner qualities in comparison to his ideal qualities. In Don Quixote, Quixote comes to his disillusionment mainly because he feels that there is some outside force that controls him. His locus of control is external, and he can blame his disillusionment on forces outside of himself. He blames “enchantment” for his predicaments and failures in life, “I know or hold that I am enchanted; and that is sufficient for the discharge of my conscience, which would be heavily burdened if I thought I was not enchanted, and should suffer myself to lie in this cage like a lazy coward, defrauding the necessitous and oppressed of that succor I might have afforded them,” (de Madriaga 92).
Sir Gawain, on the other h...