Don Quixote: Metaphors 8 key examples

Here, Cervantes metaphorically characterizes the novel, with wry humor, as “an ugly, charmless son” and insists that he is not blind to the “child’s defects.” While some fathers, he notes, might regard those defects as “gifts and graces” and make excuses for their child, Cervantes regards himself, instead, as a “stepfather” who does not have so much loyalty to his child. Through this metaphor, Cervantes suggests that he does not intend to defend his novel nor deny its weaknesses, and further, he implores the reader to criticize the novel when warranted.  Throughout the Prologue, he presents the novel with both humility and humor. 

Don Quixote has already prepared his suit of armor and readied his horse in order to assume his new role as a knight errant. Now, he feels that the only remaining task is to find a female paramour to whom he can dedicate his various achievements as he seeks adventure across Spain. “A knight errant without a lady-love,” the narrator states, “is a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul.” Here, the narrator uses two different metaphors that suggest that a knight would be incomplete without a lover. Hoping to fulfill this chivalric convention, Don Quixote decides to pick a local woman named Aldonza Lorenzo as his paramour, and though she does not appear directly in the novel, he references her repeatedly as “Dulcinea del Toboso” throughout his adventures. Dulcinea serves as a major source of motivation and inspiration for Don Quixote despite being an "unseen" character who is presumably unaware of his affections. 

Don Quixote’s niece describes the “unchristian books,” in a simile, as being “like heretics” insofar as she believes they should be burned at the stake, a typical punishment for religious heresy in early modern Europe. The priest, who agrees that the books should be burned, metaphorically suggests that they should be put on “public trial and condemned to the flames,” again invoking both the law and religion and figuring the burning of the books as a sort of legal punishment. Later, they sort through Don Quixote’s library to find those books they regard as responsible for his erratic behavior. 

Though the primary target of Cervantes’s satire throughout Don Quixote is chivalric literature, he also occasionally satirizes other forms and genres of literature. Here, Don Quixote’s niece imagines that, once her uncle “gets over this chivalry illness,” he will begin to read poetry and attempt to “become a shepherd and wander about the forests and meadows singing and playing music.” She offers a mocking description of pastoral poetry, which often features rustic settings and shepherds. Further, she adds, he might become a poet himself, which she describes metaphorically as “a catching and incurable disease.” In this passage, then, Cervantes satirizes poetry and suggests that Don Quixote, as a result of his obsessive nature, might fixate upon some other form of literature after his tales of knights and heroes are burned.  

In this passage, Cervantes maintains an extended metaphor in which the books are under trial for religious heresy, describing the housekeeper and niece as zealots who wish to “see those innocents massacred.” The priest, in contrast, takes a more moderate approach, deciding to look at the books individually and recommending to spare some. First, they examine The Four Books of Amadis of Gaul, a favorite of Don Quixote and, as the priest explains, “the very first chivalry romance to be printed in Spain.” The priest, recognizing the important role that the Amadis of Gaul stories have played in spreading chivalric literature through Spain, declares the book, in a metaphor, as a “prophet” of a “pernicious sect” that should be “condemned to the flames” immediately.  Through this allusion, Cervantes looks at the origins of the chivalric tradition that he satirizes throughout his novel.  

Here, Lotario uses a series of conventional metaphors, first describing a “pure, chaste woman” as an “ermine,” a small, white, weasel-like mammal. In early modern Europe, it was believed that an ermine would rather be caught by a hunter than dirty its white fur with mud, and so ermine traditionally represented purity and virtue. Next, he describes a “good woman” as a “mirror of clear shining glass." Any “breath that touches the mirror,” he warns, will “cloud and dim it.” Additionally, he notes, in a simile, that a woman should be treated “like a holy relic” that is “adored but not touched.” Last, he characterizes a woman as a “beautiful garden” that strangers are barred from entering. These metaphors and similes reflect the highly traditional and misogynistic perception of Lotario, who believes that a woman is only valuable if she is kept away from other men, whose attention might sully her virtue. Though he praises female virtue and chastity, he nevertheless suggests that these values are easily tarnished. 

Here, Sancho characterizes himself, in a metaphor, as soil that if “left to itself would be poor and sterile.” Spending time with Quixote, however, has added metaphorical “manure” to the “barren soil” of his “poor wits.” The longer he accompanies Quixote, he claims, the longer this soil is tilled, and in the end he hopes to gain “wonderful yields” from their time together. Through these various agricultural metaphors, Sancho suggests that Quixote has helped to make him a more lively and intelligent thinker, fueling his own imagination. Throughout the second part of the novel, Sancho becomes increasingly invested in Quixote's fantasies, just as Quixote himself grows more cynical. 

First, Quixote asks Sancho if he has ever seen a play where actors play characters of different social rank and character. After Sancho affirms that he has, Quixote gets to the point of his speech. Just as actors play different parts but return to their equal status once the play is over, so too does a similar logic operate in “the play of this life.” Though one man might be an “emperor” and another a “pope,” death, Quixote notes, “strips them all” of their respective “costumes.” In the end, he concludes, all are ultimately equal. His speech suggests that there is something artificial about social status on earth, which is distinguished by mere clothing. Sancho, however, later notes that this metaphor is highly conventional, and he isn’t impressed by Quixote’s unoriginal notion.