The midlife crisis seems almost a cliche today: bored and disillusioned, an aging man drastically alters his life in a desperate attempt to find meaning. Certainly, Don Quixote seems to suffer from that very disorder (and perhaps dementia as well), yet his experience proves earth shattering not only for him, but to an entire society and world as well. Don Quixote's radicalism exists as an antigen that utterly ravages a world that thrives on order and convention. Creating, in tandem, a fantasy world and new positive values, Don Quixote's rejection of accepted social convention threatens the precarious existence of the sane and ordered "reality" of his fellow characters to such an extent that they must set out to shatter his illusions; some to restore sanity to the Knight and order to the world, and others to ridicule him and overthrow his values, but it is Don Quixote's world that prevails and comes to dominate them.
             From the very outset of the novel Don Quixote decides to enact his vision, taking the steps he sees necessary to becoming a night (Predmore, 100). Rather than simply being a case of episodic delusions, Don Quixote's madness seems to be more a product of the deliberate application of chivalric motifs. Though eccentric, his choices are indeed choices, and he willfully creates a world, rather than being thrust into one. It is only after he arrives at the Sierra Morena mountains that Don Quixote decides to pursue his "knightly penance" when he notices his surrounding are appropriate. If his decision is a premeditated action, is he truly mad? If he actively shapes his life into a chivalric romance, it is deduced he is in control of his mania rather than being controlled by it.
             When pressed to defend his profession, Don Quixote invariably appeals to the ennobling effect of knighthood (Predmore, 104). Developing alongside the Manchegan's new world are new, positive, valu...