#really shifted my perspective on canto 7

[cyborg-squid]

Slept and reflected on my Canto 7 thoughts some more and stumbled some themes regarding the original Don Quixote and the themes of parent and child they have with Sancho and the Family; this was sparked by DQs panic effect which was something like 'Duty/Responsibility to the Family' (can't find the exact text).

And, while this might not be something I personally agree with, there's this idea and trope that parents, when they have a family, have to give up some of their hobbies or aspirations or the like; we can see that, by the end of DQs story, he has accepted that he has to give up his heroic dreams in order to take care of his Family, believing now that the two can no longer coexist. And knowing, rather accurately, that it was his dream that put his Family in this position to begin with; at the start, his Family didn't really believe in his dreams of human and Bloodfiend coexistence and heroic Fixers, but they were willing to go along with it because they love their Father.

It's a little painful to type this, but the assessment of his dream as being naive is pretty accurate, at least in it's manifestation via La Manchaland, because while he has been able to maintain strong self-discipline in refusing to drink from humans, his Children didn't have that same quality and didn't fully know what they were getting into with being a part of La Manchaland, and the deprivation they would end up being subjected to, all for a cause and dream they didn't truly believe. It's no surprise, then, that they ended up breaking. The Children, even though they're not being forced per se, go along with it in order to make their Father happy, without fully knowing what it would entail.

And by the time of the final boss fight, DQ knows this, sees the suffering his childish dream has wrought upon his family, and is now ready to bear the responsibility of taking care of them, as well as the responsibility for their sins, which (in his eyes) means the final abandonment of his long held dream. Our Don Quixote has most often been depicted as a childish one, but it is La Manchaland's Don Quixote that now has an arc depicting a reaching of maturity, albeit a stunted sort. Like I said earlier, the idea that being a parent, starting a family, means letting go of your past dreams...

...but he really didn't need to. Because DQ's dream of peace, tomorrow, and of Fixers, which he first inherited from Bari, were successfully passed on to Sancho, even if she didn't recognize it at first. It's not something that grew naturally in her, it seems, as she ended up being the more 'realist' one than DQ in the past (in the present Canto these positions are reversed), but they're present nonetheless, and that belief is stronger in her than it is in others of the Family, likely because she was the one with a stronger bond to their Father Don Quixote, as well as becoming closer to Bari, the originator of said dream.

Because with Sancho, the belief in the dream isn't innate or 'natural' to her, we see that the world of the City is not an easy place for dreams of peace and justice to exist in, but she believes in and loves her Father (and dear friend Bari), who believed in that dream, and thus she will continue on that adventure in his stead. Because there is also this idea of parents living vicariously through their children, or children carrying on the legacy of their parents. La Manchaland's Don Quixote, as shackled, by duty and responsibility, to the past as he now is, is unable to move forward as he once could, but Sancho, our Don Quixote, is still able to, thanks in large part to the gifts and dreams he gave her (as well as the aid of the Sinners, in helping her realize that the dream is not yet ended), and will now move forward in his stead.