Don Quixote

Imagination I believe is a development of fantasy; it is in fact based upon the ability to discern between the two. Imagination is based on events or experiences that have in fact happened in the past therefore the very foundation of imagination is based in sensorial experiences where as fantasy crosses over into the area of things which have never happened before. Where as imagination is the ability to picture things or to re experience things after the fact of them happening and even at times using these as a basis, create new experiences.

It becomes dangerous and bad to operate in either imagination and fantasy only when these become your defined reality. There is safety in understanding where the line between reality and these two are. However things can go awry when this line becomes skewed even as we see in Don Quixote. His line becomes practically non-existent and leads to bad situations and even death in one instance.


It is extremely subjective to place a boundary on peoples imagination in order to keep them from loosing a grasp on reality. Each person is obviously going to be completely different. For some their escape is creativity whether it be writing etc. The greatest guard I could see is not isolating themselves because this allows for constant interaction with others and keeps the realms separated.


Most if not all of Don Quixote was fantasy. He was living in a world that did not exist as he saw it. There was a little foundation for what he saw from the books he read but soon he began to not only relive the adventures he read about but began to create his own within his mind which lead to his troubles. Imagination can only really be seen (based on the definition above) from the fact that many things he saw and thought were somewhat based on the books he was reading.