Don Quixote is the invention of a real man within the novel: Alonso Quijano, the Good. In the end, the knight dies, and Quijano returns.
Who is he
Alonso Quijano is a peaceful nobleman from La Mancha who, after reading so many chivalric novels, loses the boundary between fiction and reality and reinvents himself as the knight-errant Don Quixote. The knight is a role; Quijano is the man.
The return at the end
At the end of the second part, defeated and sick, he regains his senses. He renounces the books of chivalry, recovers the name Alonso Quijano, the Good, makes his will and dies lucid.
Why does this move
The tragedy is that the cure is what kills him. While he was Don Quixote, he had a project that organized his life. When he returns to being just Quijano, he loses his symbolic axis and, with it, his will to live.
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Who is Alonso Quijano?
He is the nobleman from La Mancha who goes crazy from reading chivalry and creates the persona of Don Quixote. At the end of the novel, he regains his senses and dies under his real name.
Are Don Quixote and Alonso Quijano the same person?
Yes. Don Quixote is the name Quijano gives himself when he becomes a knight-errant. They are the same person in two states.
Why does Alonso Quijano die at the end?
Upon regaining his reason, he loses the narrative that gave meaning to his life. Without the plan to be a knight, he withers and dies.
Continue: Don Quixote, Part 2: summary and analysis · Who is the Knight of the White Moon · "The straight is crooked and the crooked is straight"
Source class (YouTube): Dom Quixote, Parte Dois (NousCast)