Tilting at windmills Cervantes wrote and published "Don Quixote" during the Eighty Years' War, or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), a revolt by the Habsburg Netherlands to end Spanish rule. In "Don Quixote", the eponymous protagonist consistently misinterprets the motives and actions of his adversaries and allies, and struggles to even understand his own at times — a conundrum regularly resulting in apparently unjustified violent actions and consequences. One way of interpreting Don Quixote's tilting at windmills could be allegorically, thereby promoting critical, skeptical, or satirical evaluation of either a hero's motives, rationales and actions, or the ultimate aims of a nation's foreign
The Grump (fictional character) The Grump (fictional character) The Grump ( ‘a person who always gets upset’) is a fictional character created by the Finnish author Tuomas Kyrö for a causerie series. The Grump is a man who writes letters-to-the-editor for various newspapers, full of complaints about all things imaginable. He basically has the attitude that “everyone is entitled to my opinion.” "Mielensäpahoittaja" is a cranky old man of roughly 80 years of age, and he is from Häme, as his dialect is a variant of the Tavastian dialects. He lives in the countryside, termed "Sysi-Suomi", which is ironic portmaneau of various hyphenated Finlands