A Twisted Reality: A Comparison of Don Quixote by Cervantes and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Twain

I beg you, ladies, not to fly, nor to fear any outrage; for it ill fits or suits the order of chivalry which I profess to injure anyone, least of all maidens of such rank as your appearance proclaims you to be. The girls stared at him. Trying to get a look at his face, which was almost covered by the badly made visor. But when they heard themselves called maidens -a title ill-suited to their profession -they could not help laughing, which stung Don Quixote into replying: Civility befits the fair; and laughter arising from trivial causes is, moreover, great folly. I do not say this to offend you nor to incur your displeasure, for I have no other wish than to serve you (Cervantes 38).

This quotation is found in Miguel Cervantes novel Don Quixote and illustrates the difficulty the main character, Don Quixote has with distinguishing between the world's reality and his reality, which is a certain type of dream world for him. This theme of appearances versus reality is an underlying theme throughout Don Quixote and an American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. The coming of age experiences and adventures both Don Quixote and Huck Finn have are childlike, each in their own ways. For both Don Quixote and Huck Finn, their coming of age experiences distort reality into what they want that reality to be; they see their experiences at the beginning of each of their journeys as examples of how they view reality and turn them into something that the world's reality is not. In comparison of the two novels Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, the theme of appearance versus reality in their coming of age experiences are brought forth and made evident through the picaresque novel technique.