It is difficult to read more than a page or two of Don Quixote de la Mancha without coming across an example of union (or conflict) between the extraordinary and the banal. Indeed, Cervantes repeatedly uses this juxtaposition as his primary comic device, generally to the detriment of poor, mad Don Quixote, whose overzealous perception of the ordinary world around him drives the novel. At the same time, the squire Sancho Panza consistently takes the side of reality, but only when he is immediately faced with the obvious error of his master's sensory perception of the world. That is, Sancho accepts and even seems fascinated by Quixote's eloquent description of the chivalric life, but when faced with the absurdity or potential danger of acting according to the chivalric code, he returns to what he knows: the safe, everyday world with which he is familiar. family. As we will see, this pattern becomes particularly evident in the contiguity and apparent discontinuity between chapters 20 and 21. These two chapters seem to run in opposite directions: while Sancho dominates the first with his interrupted story and his secret defecation, Quijote takes the lead upper hand. the second with the emotion for Mambrino's helmet and the haughty story of the knight's life. Yet these seemingly incongruent aspects of the chapters fit together, in the way outlined above, when seen in light of the fulling mill adventure in chapter 20. It all begins with an unknown noise in the night, which sparks a battle between our two heroes for supremacy of the 'interpretation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Don Quijote and Sancho respond to noise in characteristically opposite ways. Excitement rises in the heart of the knight, who considers the disturbing noise an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his honor: "I know that for those who are watching the peligros, the grandes hazañas, the valerosos hechos" (p. 179). Quijote sees this mysterious danger as his destiny, and repeatedly says that he would welcome a heroic death during his adventures if God willed it, even giving instructions to Sancho in case he does not return. Although his master's passionate description of his duties moves Sancho to tears, the squire maintains his preference for survival over princes, fearing the dual prospect of losing his friend and facing the terrifying noises alone . Since Don Quixote is faithful to his sense of duty, Sancho must subtly steal the chapter's dominion from him to prevent him from leaving in search of danger. To do so, Sancho ties Rocinante's feet together, immobilizing the horse, and Don Quixote reluctantly decides to wait until dawn. Sancho offers to entertain his master until dawn by telling him stories, thus usurping control of the dialogue and chapter of Don Quixote. Above Quixote, in this hierarchy of power, however, sits the historian-narrator who truly oversees the story. Throughout the text, the narrator supports Don Quixote, not necessarily agreeing with the mad knight's interpretations, but accepting their plausibility and never mocking him for his madness. The narrator reads his story fully expecting Quijote's experiences to mirror those of other caballeros andantes, and repeatedly exalts the knight, calling him "luz y espejo de la caballería manchega" (92), for example. We must therefore consider him as idealistic as Quijote, bound to chivalric conventions despite his protagonist's repeated misinterpretations. He doesn't always agree with the mad knight's interpretations, of course, but he doesn't scoffnever his subject for his madness. It is fitting, then, that Sancho's initial attempt to exert an influence on the flow of events includes the telling of a competing story, a story dealing with shepherds rather than knights-errant. Sancho thus usurps the power not only of his immediate master but also of his narrator. Although the historian-narrator takes Quijote's side in this central conflict, the biting satire of chivalric romance throughout the novel suggests that Cervantes himself supports Sancho. From this point of view, the narrator becomes a sort of straw man that Cervantes has set up as a vehicle of irony. Sancho's usurpation thus acquires a double meaning, firstly as a means by which the squire can prevent his master from departing in search of danger, and secondly as a means by which the author can insert his sarcastic voice into a false story. Although Sancho's story does not necessarily reflect Cervantes' literary preferences, the forced interruption in the pseudo-chivalric novel of Don Quixote is in line with the author's low opinion of the genre. Although Sancho's explicit intention in telling his story is simply to distract his master, it quickly becomes clear from the style and content of the tale that he is simultaneously trying to calm himself. The story begins: «In a place in Extremadura there was a cabaret shepherd, I wanted to decide that he looked at cabras; that shepherd or cabrerizo, as I say in my story, was called Lope Ruiz; and this Lope Ruiz was in love with a shepherdess called Torralba; the shepherd called Torralba was hija de un ganadero rico, y este ganadero rico...' (182) Stylistically, by doubling each name or occupation - as the object of one sentence and the subject of the next - Sancho gives his story a deliberate rhythm, a repetitive beat that serves to soothe him, just as a steady rocking motion soothes a crying baby. When Quixote complains about the monotony of this way of telling the story, Sancho justifies it by stating: "In the same way that I tell you... if you know all the advice in my mind, and I can't count it from anyone else, it's not good that Your mercy is to ask me to use new things" (182). These "usos nuevos", although they explicitly refer to narrative conventions, also indirectly refer to ways of thinking, of perceiving the world and, in this particular adventure, of acting in the face of a potential threat. “Mi tierra,” then, describes the source not only of Sancho's literary style but also of his interpretation of the unknown noise. He tells this kind of story at this particular point in the novel specifically to distract himself from the possibility that Quixote is right - and to remind himself of his old ways and his home, where he felt safe, where strange noises in the night were heard. always have innocent explanations. After Don Quixote cuts Sancho's story short, the squire suddenly feels the urge to defecate. Although this is explicitly a normal physiological process, the timing of this particular impulse makes it clear that, unconsciously, Sancho is still trying to distance himself from the terror of the unknown by falling back into the mundane. Cervantes makes this implication clear through Quijote's initial reaction to the terrible smell: "Paréceme, Sancho, que teners mucho miedo" (186). Don Quixote tried to reassert his dominance over the course of events by interrupting Sancho's story and trying to ride Rocinante again; having thwarted his literary usurpation, Sancho must now try a less linguistic and more animalistic approach to maintain interpretative control. If his pastoral story was at odds with the chivalric romance of Don Quixote, the undignified act of defecation serves aspolar opposite to the glorious deeds of the knights errant. Indeed, if we were to graph the progression of chivalric honor in these two chapters, this brief scene of Sancho's defecation would surely mark the low point. When morning comes and our two protagonists discover that the true source of the strange noise was a mill-mill, we learn that both were wrong in their shared assumption of a threatening origin. Yet, while Sancho is thrilled to find such an ordinary machine as the cause of the noise, the sight infuriates Don Quixote. Looking at chapter 20 figuratively, we could say that, when the noise was still unknown, a fight began between Quixote and the his squire to determine what the cause was; Sancho won this fight by tying Rocinante's legs together, telling his story in the style he chose, even defecating - in short, refusing to allow Don Quixote to control the chapter. Quixote's anger at the sight of the fulling mill, however, leads him to reaffirm his dominion both over Sancho ("es menester hacer diferencia de amo a mozo, de señor a criado y de caballero a escudero", 190) and over the course of the fulling mill . the novel. In fact, as we will see, chapter 21 is dominated by Don Quixote; after the shame of chapter 20, the knight jumps at the opportunity to use Mambrino's helmet to restore his vision. Don Quixote and Sancho briefly argue at the beginning of chapter 21 about whether the approaching man is wearing a helmet - an argument which, placed chronologically as the boundary between two opposing spheres of influence, encapsulates the juxtaposition of these two chapters and the greater conflict between realism and idealism throughout the text. Incredulous at Sancho's interrogation, Quixote asks his squire if he actually sees a knight with a golden helmet on his head approaching. Sancho responds: "What I see and the columbro... it's not even a man in an ass, I'm like mine, who draws something from his head that shines" (192). This "no es sino" construction perfectly describes Sancho's way of thinking and perceiving: he sees "nothing other than" a man with something shiny in his head, and therefore cannot make the leap to affirm that it is the Mambrino helmet. When Sancho, in the course of his doubts, recalls the recent adventure of the fulling mill, Don Quixote immediately calms him: "Ya os he dicho...que no me mentéis, ni por pienso, más eso de los batanes" (192). The knight is certainly aware of his previous misinterpretation, but he refuses to let it alter his interpretation of the approaching man or his knightly duties. He simply wants to erase it from memory, both his and Sancho's, and Sancho in fact drops his objection. Of course, unfortunately for poor Don Quixote, the batanas' misadventure found its way into the historian-narrator's manuscript and into the reader. After Sancho gives up the subject, the historian-narrator himself interjects with a few sentences that tell the "true story of the barber and his basin. Yet this truth is of no importance, for two reasons. First, any rational reader would assume from the start that Sancho was right and Quijote was wrong; we don't need the narrator to tell us this. This section could easily be eliminated without confusing readers as to the real identity of the approaching man What more important for our purposes, what the man actually wears has no impact on the balance of interpretive power between Quijote and Sancho has already given up and Quijote has regained control seems to support the squire's interpretation by confirming the inaccuracy of Don Quixote's interpretation.