Don Quixote Ch. 120: The Bristly Pig Drive and Capture at

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

The Bristly Pig Drive and Capture at the Duke's Castle

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Summary

On a dark night when Diana strolls to the antipodes, Don Quixote wakes Sancho and demands three or four hundred lashes for Dulcinea's disenchantment before they begin their pastoral songs, but Sancho refuses to scourge himself in the middle of sleep and praises slumber as the universal coin wherewith everything is bought, the cloak that covers all a man's thoughts, and almost the equal of death. Quixote answers with post tenebras spero lucem and calls him ungrateful for governorship and promised county, while Sancho retorts that proverbs drop from his master's mouth well-timed and from his own untimely.

A harsh noise approaches: six hundred pigs bound for a fair trample Quixote, Sancho, Rocinante, and Dapple without respect for knight or squire, scattering armour and stores while Sancho wants his sword to kill half a dozen dirty pigs. Quixote calls the insult heaven's chastisement of a vanquished knight whom jackals devour, wasps sting, and pigs trample, though Sancho asks what the Panzas have to do with the Quixotes when squires inherit knights' penalties. Quixote sings a madrigal on love's cruelty while Sancho sleeps, then at dawn they resume until armed horsemen surround them in silence, threaten lances if they speak, and march them with abuse as Troglodytes, cannibals, and blood-thirsty lions until Quixote recognises the duke's castle where good turns into evil and evil into worse.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading When Defeat Becomes Bristly Capture

A dark night of whipping demands and sleep philosophy ends in six hundred pigs trampling the vanquished knight before silent horsemen drag him to the duke's castle. Quixote sings a madrigal on love's cruelty while Sancho sleeps, then at dawn they resume until armed horsemen surround them in silence, threaten lances if they speak, and march them with abuse as Troglodytes, cannibals, and blood-thirsty lions until Quixote recognises the duke's castle where good turns into evil and evil into worse.

That the vanquished knight's homeward road runs through humiliation back to his hosts.

Coming Up in Chapter 121

The horsemen dismounted, and, together with the men on foot, without a moment’s delay taking up Sancho and Don Quixote bodily, they carried them into the court, all round which near a hundred torches fixed in sockets were burning,....

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Original text

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Chapter 120

The Bristly Pig Drive and Capture at the Duke's Castle

CHAPTER LXVIII. OF THE BRISTLY ADVENTURE THAT BEFELL DON QUIXOTE The night was somewhat dark, for though there was a moon in the sky it was not in a quarter where she could be seen; for sometimes the lady Diana goes on a stroll to the antipodes, and leaves the mountains all black and the valleys in darkness. Don Quixote obeyed nature so far as to sleep his first sleep, but did not give way to the second, very different from Sancho, who never had any second, because with him sleep lasted from night till morning, wherein he showed what…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Name the When Six Hundred Pigs Trample the Vanquished Knight Toward the Duke's Castle Move

Re-read the chapter summary and write down where when six hundred pigs trample the vanquished knight toward the duke's castle first appears, who pays for it, and who benefits from keeping it going. Then write one sentence you could say to interrupt the pattern without shaming the person caught in it.

Consider:

•Separate the person's worth from the pattern's cost
•Notice who has power to stop or fuel the scene
•Ask what truth would require someone to give up

Journaling Prompt

Write about a time when you saw when six hundred pigs trample the vanquished knight toward the duke's castle in your own life. What finally made the pattern impossible to ignore?

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The Bristly Pig Drive and Capture at the Duke's Castle

Summary