Don Quixote Chapter 43 Summary

Summary

In this chapter Don Quixote delivers a second set of counsels to Sancho Panza about how he should conduct himself as a governor. Speaking with the authority of a self-styled educator, Don Quixote mixes practical domestic advice (cleanliness, dress, diet, temperance, sleep, upright posture on horseback) with rules about speech and conduct (avoid excessive proverbs, do not argue about families, learn to sign one’s name). Sancho listens attentively and repeatedly promises to remember the precepts, though he often admits forgetfulness and expresses a desire to have the advice written down for his confessor.

Much of the chapter is a comic exchange: Don Quixote grows exasperated as Sancho keeps interrupting with a cascade of folk proverbs and homespun maxims. Sancho insists he has nothing else to offer but proverbs, and that they are his natural stock-in-trade; he imagines himself managing well once in office and argues he needn’t be literate to govern. Don Quixote criticizes illiteracy as a mark of bad breeding or incorrigibility, demands at least a signature, and warns that misuse of proverbs and ignorance could bring trouble. The chapter closes with Don Quixote praising Sancho’s final modest expression of priorities—preferring honesty and a simple life to corrupt power—and they go to dinner, Don Quixote content that he has fulfilled his duty of advising him.

Key events

1. Don Quixote delivers detailed advice on personal hygiene, dress, diet, and behavior for a governor.
2. He cautions Sancho against excessive use of proverbs and other affectations of speech.
3. Sancho repeatedly answers with strings of proverbs and admits he cannot read or easily remember all advice.
4. Don Quixote urges Sancho to learn to sign his name and condemns illiteracy in governors.
5. A heated but comic exchange unfolds over the usefulness and danger of proverbs.
6. Don Quixote finally blesses Sancho's good instincts and they go to dinner.

Analysis

This chapter functions as both comic character study and moral lesson. Structurally it continues the pair’s didactic dialogue pattern: Don Quixote as self-appointed mentor and Sancho as earthy everyman. The humor arises from the mismatch between Don Quixote’s lofty rhetoric on governance and Sancho’s rustic reliance on proverbs; that tension reveals each man’s strengths and weaknesses. Don Quixote’s counsels mix practical bourgeois virtues (cleanliness, temperance, punctuality) with social performance (posture on horseback, modest dress) and a moral core (do right, avoid slander). This blend underscores the novel’s recurring theme of appearance versus reality: manner and clothes can shape social role even as genuine virtue matters.

Sancho’s proverbs and resistance to literacy dramatize the limits of popular wisdom and point to the novel’s interest in language. Proverbs act as a double-edged symbol: they are communal knowledge and pragmatic guides, but when overused they become empty noise that can undermine authority. Don Quixote’s emphasis on learning to sign highlights the era’s linkage of literacy with legitimacy. Narratively, the chapter deepens the bond between knight and squire: Don Quixote earnestly tries to form a governor in Sancho’s image, and despite comedic friction he ultimately affirms Sancho’s innate decency. The voice of the narrator balances gentle satire with moral seriousness, keeping the scene comic without wholly undermining its instructive intent.

Important quotes

“Eat not garlic nor onions, lest they find out thy boorish origin by the smell;”

Don QuixoteA sample of Don Quixote’s practical, social-advice list aimed at helping Sancho appear respectable as a governor.

“Eruct, Sancho, not belch," said Don Quixote.”

Don QuixoteDon Quixote corrects Sancho’s coarse language, illustrating his concern for manners and the comic renaming of a common bodily act.

“By God, Sancho," said Don Quixote, "for those last words thou hast uttered alone, I consider thou deservest to be governor of a thousand islands.”

Don QuixoteDon Quixote praises Sancho’s final declaration of modesty and integrity, rewarding his sensible instinct despite earlier exasperation.

Characters in Chapter 43

• Don Quixote
• Sancho Panza
• The Duke