Don Quixote’s Second Expedition

Don Quixote’s Second Expedition begins with a renewed claim that the world needs knight-errantry and an act of persuasion that turns that claim into a shared journey. Don Quixote leaves home with Sancho Panza, a neighbor he has recruited as his squire by promising future rule over an island. Their departure, made secretly at night, sets the practical, comic terms of their partnership: Sancho travels with provisions and his own ass, while Don Quixote imagines that the first discourteous knight they meet may supply him with a more honorable mount.

A Quiet Interval and a Renewed Purpose

For fifteen days Don Quixote remains at home without showing any desire to resume his former delusions. The apparent calm does not mean that his conviction has changed. He holds lively discussions with the curate and the barber, insisting that the world most needs knights-errant and that he is the man destined to revive the practice. The curate alternates between contradicting and agreeing with him, a cautious strategy intended to make it possible to bring Don Quixote to reason. The interval therefore contains both a pause in outward action and the persistence of the belief that will send him back onto the road.

The expedition takes shape through persuasion rather than any demonstrated readiness on Sancho’s part for adventure. Don Quixote works upon a poor farm laborer who is described as honest but of little wit, talking him into leaving his ordinary life to serve as a squire. He presents the promised island governorship as a reward that could arrive suddenly, an adventure away from home transformed into the prospect of political advancement. Sancho accepts the offer and leaves his wife and children behind. His expectation of becoming governor will accompany him from the start: the promise is not a distant abstraction but the future he anticipates as he rides.

Provisions, Promises, and Improvisation

Don Quixote prepares for the journey by raising money through selling one possession and pawning another, making a bad bargain in each case. He nevertheless gathers a fair sum, obtains a buckler on loan from a friend, and restores his battered helmet as best he can. His equipment is thus a mixture of borrowed protection, repair, and financial compromise. He tells Sancho when they will set out and instructs him particularly to bring saddle-bags, leaving the squire to decide what else he needs.

Sancho plans to bring a good ass because he is not inclined to travel on foot. Don Quixote hesitates over whether an esquire may properly ride an ass, since he cannot recall an example among the knights-errant whose customs he tries to follow. He accepts the practical arrangement despite that uncertainty, telling himself that he can provide Sancho with a more honorable mount by taking the horse of the first discourteous knight they encounter. The mismatch between remembered chivalric precedent and the journey’s immediate needs is established before they leave: Sancho has a real animal to ride, while Don Quixote’s proposed alternative depends on an encounter that has not yet occurred.

The Secret Departure and the Road

Once Sancho has gathered his belongings, including the provisions Don Quixote requested, the two leave without taking leave of their households. Sancho departs without saying goodbye to his wife and children; Don Quixote likewise leaves without informing his housekeeper and niece. They slip out of the village at night and travel far enough that, by daylight, they consider themselves beyond discovery even if a search should be made. Their departure is a deliberate evasion of notice, not a public announcement of a new undertaking.

By morning the differences between the travelers are already visible in their equipment and expectations. Sancho rides his ass with provisions and a leather wine-bottle, looking forward to the governorship promised to him. Don Quixote chooses the same route he took on his first journey, across Campo de Montiel. This time they travel with less discomfort than on that earlier outing: it is early, and the sun’s rays fall obliquely rather than bringing the heat that had troubled him before. The repeated road links the new expedition to the first, while the second traveler and his material needs alter the composition of the journey.

The Island as Motive and Chivalric Prospect

Sancho soon reminds his master not to forget the island, adding that he believes himself capable of governing one however large it may be. Don Quixote answers by presenting the reward as a custom of the old knights-errant, who appointed their squires governors of islands or kingdoms they had won. He claims he will not fail to follow that generous practice and intends to improve upon it: where earlier knights might wait until a squire was old and worn down by long service, he imagines that Sancho may receive a kingdom within days.

The promise grows as Don Quixote explains it. He first holds out an island and its governorship; he then proposes that, if both men live, he may win a kingdom with dependent territories within six days, allowing Sancho to be crowned king of one of them. This expansion shows how the expedition’s material arrangement is sustained by an imagined future reward. Sancho has left his family and taken to the road in expectation of advancement; Don Quixote recasts that expectation as an established chivalric custom and enlarges it into kingship. At the outset, the expedition is therefore both a return to the road and a renewed negotiation between Don Quixote’s romance-shaped promises and Sancho’s practical hopes.