Goodbye dear Don Quixote

Well at long last I finished our ambitious summer project of reading Don Quixote and I admit to being a little sad. After so much time together it is hard to say goodbye and I also have lots of questions now that I didn't have 300 pages ago.

For example, who were the Duke and Duchess and why were they tricking Don Quixote and having so much fun at his expense? That just didn't seem right to me and yet the book travels on with no comment on whether  this is acceptable behavior, particularly toward someone they know to be delusional.

Also, why would the good knight suddenly come to his senses on this deathbed and renounce his former life? And isn't it sad that he would then, with no chance of changing the course of his life, see that he had been wrong all along?  Perhaps at that point it is better not to know, but what do you all think?

Jean was absolutely right when she said the last 100 or so pages were the best in the book, I was really unable to put it down once I got to Sancho's brilliant governorship of his insula, his decision to leave it all behind and the end of the Don's knight errantcy at the hand of his neighbor the bachelor.

Now I know why this book has held the interest of so many for centuries. Goodbye, dear Don Quixote.