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Death lurks everywhere in Don Quixote, and who can be surprised, considering how Don Quixote himself constantly challenges people to deadly duels? In fact, when you consider how much trouble he gets himself into, it's a surprise that the guy doesn't die within the first 100 pages.
But death is more than a punch line to the humor of Don Quixote's adventures. It's also something that characters in this book like to wax poetic about. For Sancho especially, death represents the great equalizer, the thing that eventually happens to everyone, whether they're rich and powerful or humble and powerless. For him, death helps give people a good perspective on how fame, wealth, and power really don't mean as much as we think they do. We all end up in the same place.
In Don Quixote, death is the only true cure for madness as strong as Don Quixote's.
For Cervantes, death is never a solution for anything. If someone you love doesn't love you back, move on.