Don Quixote’s way of creating identities for him and others are completely shameful and not concerning of anyone else. What exactly is He going through? A very bad case of a mid-life crisis, determined by the fact that he is about fifty; he’s old, and he feels like he needs something, an adventure.
He goes on a adventure which by itself is perfectly fine as long as he did his adventure by himself. He doesn’t through and dragged everyone else into his failing interpretation of what he wants, but it gets worse. In part 1, chapter 8, the famous windmill scene, Don Quixote and his “squire” Sancho Panza see a group of windmills, Don Quixote sees giants and when Sancho tried to reason with Quixote, Quixote puts own Panza saying “… that thou art not well-versed in the matter of adventures….”(translation by Grossman), and even after Panza is right, in the same chapter, the two met two friars, and again Quixote insults Panza saying “… that you know very little about adventures; what I say is true…” (translation by Grossman). Don Quixote does not care about what Sancho says; to him Sancho is always wrong. So why why does Don Quixote bring Sancho just to insult him? Because Quixote’s mind is too obsessed with him being a valiant knight that his pride is so large that anything anyone else says that is even a the slightest bit of contrary is instantly wrong and should be rebuked. Don Quixote is crazy and disrespectful but also dangerous.
The two friars were also insulted by Don “You wicked and monstrous creatures…”(Grossman) and when the friars said “Senor, we are not wicked nor monstrous…”(Grossman) Don Quixote says “No soft words for me; I know who you are, perfidious rabble…”(Grossman). Don Quixote calls them wicked and monstrous, but it’s the term creature that worse; Don Quixote doesn’t think the friars are human. Yet even with that insult, the friars have enough dignity in themselves to call Don Quixote Senor, and to plead that they are not wicked and monstrous. Don Quixote just calls them another insult: perfidious rabble, perfidious means treacherous, and rabble means coward; Don Quixote is calling them treacherous cowards, but it doesn’t end there. After calling them perfidious rabble, Don Quixote grabs his lance, gets on his horse, and charges to one of the friars, the innocent helpless friar, and according to the narrator: “attacked the friar with so much ferocity and courage that if he had not allowed himself to fall off the mule, the friar would have been thrown to the ground and seriously injured or even killed.” Don Quixote intentions were to kill the friar, all because if his imaginative conquest. After the friar fell off the mule and on to ground Sancho Panza starts taking the clothes off for spoils, and what happens? The Narrator says “The servants… attacked Sancho and knocked him down, and leaving no hair in his beard unscathed, they kicked him, breathless, and senseless and left him lying on the ground.” Sancho Panza helps Don Quixote’s “dream” and get knocked out, and where was Don Quixote? Talking to the woman in the carriage saying “O beauteous lady, thou canst do thy person as thou wishest, for the arrogance of thy captons here lieth on the ground, anguished by this my mighty arm… know that I am called Don Quixote of La Mancha…”. Don Quixote, doing all this evil and for what? Don Quixote is the wicked and monstrous creature, he is the perfidious rabble, he has no concerns for Sancho Panza, lying unconscious for his master’s bidding, and he doesn’t know the difference from being a valiant knight and a heartless man, who looks at one person and thinks that he should be dead. Don Quixote is no knight.