Recorded," Don Quixote encounters "thirty or forty windmills" that he envisions as "monstrous giants," all of whom Don Quixote intends "to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God’s good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth.”

Don Quixote is utterly defeated when the sail of one of the windmills shatters his lance and knocks Don Quixote and his horse to the ground.

Don Quixote's "tilting at windmills" (jousting or otherwise fighting hand-to-hand with windmills) is symbolic of what Don Quixote considers his mission in life—to right the wrongs of the world, often in the face of windmill-mill size obstacles and seemingly overwhelming opposing forces.

Incidentally, Cervantes's choice of windmills as a symbol of the forces aligned against Don Quixote isn't random. The region of La Mancha where Quixano/Quixote was born and raised is known for its many windmills, where farmers could mill (grind) the grains they grew in the fertile fields in the area.

Don Quixote's heroism is found in his noble, idealistic quest to restore chivalry, justice, and honor to Spain, and in the fact that whether he wins or loses his battles with the forces of evil and injustice—he most often lost—Don Quixote never compromises his ideals, and he never gave up his quest.

Don Quixote is a lovable character. He is a hero in his own mind. His ideas on chivalry are honorable ideas. He is a hopeless romantic who learns the hard way that not everyone is as romantic as he is. Still, he stands firm in his chivalric passion. Don Quixote does every act in the name of his lady love--Dulcinea.

Don Quixote is a true hero in every sense of the word. He is only trying to make the world a better place. He is trying to revive a practice that has subsided. The knight-errant is a lovely, romantic idea. Although Don Quixote is fighting windmills and herds of sheep, he does it all in the name of heroism and chivalry:

Alonso Quixano is a fifty-year-old man who reads of chivalric tales until he begins to neglect his domestic affairs. Eventually he decides that for his own honor and that of the state, he must revive the profession of the knight-errant. He therefore dons his armor and becomes Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha and Knight of the Rueful Figure. Not happy with the modern world, he takes it upon himself to bring back the golden age of heroism and chivalry.

No doubt, Don Quixote is a nuisance to some, but to those who understand his heart, he is a true hero. He is the true chivalric hero. He has some of his wits about him. He rides and fights for Dulcinea. This tale is a touching romance for Quixote is in love with Dulcinea:

To be a full knight requires a ladylove. Don Quixote chooses Aldonza Lorenzo, a local woman, and renames her Dulcinea. She does not have a major role in the novel, but remains the ideal of womanhood in Don Quixote's mind. He resolves to do good deeds in her honor.

The reader only wishes that she knew who Don Quixote is. Truly, the reader is pulling for Quixote to win his ultimate lady love. Caught up in a fantasy world, Don Quixote is no average character. He is a knight-errant. He has his horse and squire. He rides the countryside, hoping to revive heroism and chivalry. After all, that is what a true gentleman would do.

How we view Don Quixote depends a great deal on our attitude toward ideals.  Many realists, for example, as the name implies, believe that ideals are interesting but largely not relevant to living because ideals, by their nature, will always be overpowered by real life.  On the other hand, there are idealists in this world who absolutely believe that taking action based on one's ideals can improve the world.  We only have to look at the recent "Occupy Wall Street" and related protests to see some degree of idealistic behavior in practice.

In Don Quixote, one one level, we are presented with a old man, a relatively low-level aristocrat, whose imagination is so captured by the ideals of chivalry and honor that he turns himself into a 14thC. knight-errant, complete with squire (Sancho Panza), and journeys forth to right as many wrongs that he can.  Even before he takes on the persona of a knight, we know that he kept "a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler (to affix a sword to his side), a lean hack (his mighty steed, past it's prime), and a grey-hound for coursing."  Don Quixote is already drawn to the days of chivalry because he already has a typical knight's accouterments, including a hunting dog.

That Don Quixote has completely adopted the ideals of chivalry and the plan to execute those ideals we see in the following lines:

. . . setting what wrongs he intended to right, grievances to redress, injustices to repair, abuses to remove, and duties to discharge

As the knight sallies forth to do battle with the world's injustices, Cervantes reminds us that Don Quixote really has no experience with knightly things--every bit of knowledge he has acquired about being a knight and the concept of chivalry has come to him through books, which, of course, do not depict the reality of a knight's life in the Middle Ages, but the ideal picture of knightly behavior.  Don Quixote is about to take his ideal view of knighthood into the real world, and the ultimate result, of course, will be disillusionment.

During his knight-errantry, Don Quixote acquires his loyal but realistic squire, Sancho Panzo, who clearly sees that his master is deluded but admires his consistent craziness, and when the knight finds his damsel in distress, he doesn't perceive her as a sturdy peasant girl but his high-born ideal of a medieval woman.  At this point, Don Quixote has all the elements of a chivalric life.

Even though, on a realistic level, everything Don Quixote does throughout the novel is laughable--tilting against windmills, addressing flocks of sheep as if they were troops--on another level we have to admire his willingness and bravery when he "risks" his life to do battle with inanimate objects--he puts his ideals into practice, which, even if we laugh, we have to admire.

The answer to the question, then, depends upon one's view of what the world is made of.  If the world is made up of only the "real," then ideals and imagination may have no place; on the other hand, if one perceives the world as being better off for having idealistic people, if wrong-headed in practice, then one can look with amusement and some degree of hope on Don Quixote.

At the end, when Don Quixote is dying, acknowledges his folly, and loses his idealistic vision, the question becomes this: Was he better off with his mistaken ideals or his clear understanding of reality?