Ginés, Montserrat
“Walker Percy’s Enraged and Bemused Quixotes”. In: Cervantes in the English Speaking World. (Estudios de literatura 96) Kassel 2005,
pp. 191-204.

Walker Percy (1916-1990) casts an ironic eye on the last vestiges of the chivalrous ideal being played out in contemporary America. He depicts an ironic tale of maladjustment between the actions and attitudes of his characters, trapped in a chivalrous-heroic conception of the world, and the prevailing social conventions in which they are immersed. Bewildered, as the protagonist of TheLast Gentleman (1966) or angry as the hero of Lancelot (1977), they bear comparison with Don Quixote. Percy’s ‘Quixotes’ attempt to impose their own idealistic life views on a world imbued with far different values and realities, against which they are constantly banging their heads. Through his ‘Quixotes’, Percy rebukes the southern heroic ideal for its failure to accept the commonplace, but not without nostalgia for the loss of the finer qualities of the old ethics swept away by the process of cultural homogenization experienced by contemporary American society.