Examples Of Fallacies In Don Quixote

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Recommended: Critical analysis of Don Quixote

Shepherding Fallacies In Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote, the knight Don Quixote de la Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza accompany a group of shepherds to a funeral. A fellow shepherd by the name of Grisóstomo passed away from a broken heart because his love for the Marcela was unrequited. Don Quixote hears that the shepherds admire and scorn Marcela’s beauty and they compare it to the plague because it brings men to despair. On the funeral day, Marcela addresses the shepherds for blaming her for Grisóstomo’s death and gives Don Quixote more insight to the situation. According to Being Logical, fallacies in an argument occur when structural and/or logical mistakes are present. Although neither side follows the forms present in Being Logical …show more content…

Marcela tells the shepherds that their desire for her gives them hope when she gives “none to Grisóstomo or any other, and of none of them can it be said that she killed them with her cruelty, for it was rather their own obstinacy that is to blame” (Cervantes 445). Their argument has a democratic fallacy because they support their point with an opinion a majority of them believe. They blame Marcela for Grisóstomo’s death because they think she gave him false hope and stripped it away from him. Marcela explains that they could blame her for that if it were true, but “the thing that killed Grisóstomo was his impatience and the impetuosity of his desire, so why blame her modest conduct and retiring life” (Cervantes 446). The shepherds are too enamored and blinded by her beauty that they don’t listen to her. They mistake her company for an opportunity to court her when she states countless times that she will never love a man. She says the shepherds only have themselves to blame for broken hearts because their desire defeats their logic. At the end of her speech, the shepherds continue to defend their pursuit of her by the actions they …show more content…

He weighs both arguments against the other and despite the formal fallacies in both, he realizes that the shepherds’ arguments contain more informal fallacies than Marcela’s. Their defense for pursuing and despising Marcela contains the ad hominem fallacy, reductionism, the democratic fallacy, and tears as a diversionary tactic. By critiquing her decision to remain spouseless and then verbally calling her names, the shepherds gain an unfair advantage because they shape who Marcela is for the audience before she is introduced. They reduce her to a beautiful woman who lures men and sends them to die of a broken heart. Marcela states that she did not choose to be beautiful and cannot be held responsible for it. She chose to remain unbound to any and if the shepherds are going to hold her accountable for that then they need to realize she is another person and shepherd like them. The shepherds conform to the idea that she gives men hope that they have a chance of claiming her. Marcela says that the shepherds are blinded by their desire for her that they fail to realize she is not giving them an opportunity to court her. The shepherds are mesmerized by her intelligence, but some refuse to respect her wishes by continuing to pursue her. Despite her warnings, their perception of her is still veiled by lust and their attention is diverted back to

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