The serious tone of Part Two is immediately apparent as the barber relates the story of the lunatic in the madhouse. Master Nicholas is shown to be gross and dull of understanding to consider Don Quixote too withdrawn from the real world to comprehend his story. The knight, on the other hand, must now realize that the common people of the world will make fun of him because they think he is too dull-witted to understand. As Part Two progresses, Don Quixote develops more and more as the tragic hero in a world of fools, with Cervantes leading his protagonist, not through a career of drubbings and burlesque, but through incidents of psychological complexity and opportunities for character development.
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