Each author has a "point of view" from which he invents and constructs his characters and incidents. Some novels may be written in first person narrative to expose subjectively society's evils; other forms of writing stem from an omniscient author who can see into each person and recount past and future history at each point in the narrative. Dickens is an example of such a writer.
Cervantes, on the other hand, chooses to write a "history" and thus gives himself certain limitations and advantages. He must journalistically give facts of what clearly occurs at each part of the action; he cannot invent attributes of his characters without documenting these qualities by actions. As a responsible historian, he cannot impose any opinions on his reader but must present each character with as many details of description and action so that his readers can draw their own conclusions. To further this ideal of objectivity, Cervantes invents the eminent historian, Cid Hamet Benengali, for only a Moor would try to underrate any Spanish achievement, and this guarantees the verisimilitude of all details in the life of Don Quixote.
Further reading into the life of the Manchegan knight, however, reinforces a growing suspicion that provides another reason for the invention of Cid Hamet. Perhaps Cervantes felt that Don Quixote was too quickly outgrowing his artificial existence, becoming more than just a lampoon out of a chivalric romance, to be, as Byron has termed him, a character created to "smile Spain's chivalry away." Like a Pinocchio animated while Gepetto lay sleeping, Don Quixote seems to wrest himself from his creator's pen and live an independent life. Furthermore, as he lives on and on in world literature, it becomes even clearer today that his organic growth defied restriction and circumvention by a mere author.
