To match the image created by the expectations

The occupation Don Quixote chooses for himself is that of knight errant. He is not under the delusion that he is a knight errant—no, he sets his mind on becoming one. He does not play at being someone else, as children do in their games; he is not pretending to be someone else, like an impostor, or impersonating a character, like an actor on stage. And he adopts the profession of knight after due reflection: it is the result of a deliberate choice. After having considered other options, he finally decides that the career of a knight errant would be the most rewarding, intellectually and morally.

But “How does one become a knight?” Van Doren asks. By acting like a knight—which is the very opposite of pretence, of make-believe. And to act the way Don Quixote does is more than to ape. To imitate as he does is a profound apprenticeship—the true way of learning and the key to understanding. “What is the difference between acting like a great man and being one? To act like a poet is to write poems; to act like a statesman is to ponder the nature of goodness and justice; to act like a student is to study; to act like a knight is to think and feel like one.”

Had Don Quixote been simply and plainly mad, or had he indulged in a protracted game of self-deception and play-acting, we should not be talking of him now, Van Doren observes—“We are talking of him because we suspect that, in the end, he did become a knight.”

“Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the picture.” Iris Murdoch made this observation in a different context, but it accurately identifies a defining feature of human nature. It was most memorably exemplified by Don Quixote—which gave Cervantes’s novel its universal relevance.

Unlike Don Quixote, however, most of us do not have the chance to select and decide for ourselves which characters we should apply ourselves to becoming.
Circumstances of life do the casting; our roles are being imposed on us, other people dictate to us our lines and prompt our acting. A haunting illustration of this was provided in one of Rossellini’s last films, General della Rovere (1959). A petty crook in Italy at the end of World War II is arrested by the Gestapo and forced by them to impersonate a prestigious figure of the Resistance, General della Rovere, so that they can extract information from political prisoners. But the con man performs his role so convincingly that the other prisoners come to worship him as their moral leader; thus he is progressively compelled to live above himself and to match the image created by their expectations. In the end, he refuses to betray their trust, he is put in front of a firing squad and dies the death of a hero. He has truly become General della Rovere.

*
To man’s basic interrogation—Why is it that God never speaks to us openly or answers us directly with a clear voice? Why are we never allowed to see his face?—C.S. Lewis gave a striking answer: How can God meet us face to face, till we have faces?

When we first enter upon the stage of life, it is as if we were only given masks that correspond to our respective roles. If we act our part well enough, the mask eventually turns into our true face. Thus Don Quixote becomes a knight, Rossellini’s petty crook becomes General della Rovere—and each of us, we can become at last who we were originally meant to be.

Simon Leys
The Hall of Uselessness