The Walking Dead: Morgan going with Don Quijote is awesome
By Susie Graham
Carol Peletier and Morgan Jones going with the people in the armor on the season 6 finale of The Walking Dead is a hugely underplayed segment of the episode.
I don’t know if the writers were intending any Don Quijote imagery or symbolism with the Morgan and Carol story line that weaved its way through season 6 or not, but they got it, big time.
If you don’t know about Don Quijote, he is a famous story from Miguel de Cervantes from Spain who lived at the same time as Shakespeare. The story is about an old man, Alonso Quijana, who reads so many books of knights in shining armor, damsels in distress and chivalry that his “brains dry up”.
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He is crazy and fancies himself a knight with a damsel to save. He enlists the help of his neighbor Sancho Panza to go along with him. He calls himself Don Quijote de la Mancha and searches the plains for wrongs to right. Sancho represents realism and Don Q, idealism.
Sancho sees what’s really there and Don Quijote what he wants to be there. In the most famous scene, he fights windmills on the plains that he insists are giants and to speak the current vernacular, he gets his ass kicked.
The man from the Kingdom who rode up on the horse with the other soldier to help Morgan and Carol looked just like Don Quijote! He looked a knight in shining armor of the apocalypse with a spear. The imagery was pure Quijote.
Morgan needs a Quixotic place, he is just like Quijote himself. He has been trying to hold tight to the “all life is precious” idealistic philosophy in the apocalypse. Fighting Wolves and Walkers instead of Windmills and getting his ass kicked.
Carol has been his Sancho Panza. For every time Morgan said, “You don’t have to kill,” she said, “Of course you do.” He says they’re giants, she says they’re windmills! But just like the readers of Don Quijote and the song in the play, we want to see the giants sometimes, too. We want to dream the impossible dream.
With the season finale of The Walking Dead, Morgan was able to do something Don Quijote could never do. He can maybe have both giants and windmills; we have zombies after all. Morgan told Rick that what he believes isn’t right. There is no right. There’s just the wrong that doesn’t pull you down.
Morgan doesn’t have to abandon his idealism. He can still believe in avoiding killing and the principles in The Art of Peace. But he can take comfort in the idea that in this case he chose the wrong that won’t pull him down.
Carol can continue to point out the windmills to Morgan and still admire him for wanting to fight the giants. Where would Don Quijote be without his Sancho? Morgan did say he’d start listening to her real soon.