Ms. Andrea Solomon, Ms. Mary Edsall
Colloquium F2003x
Assignment #15 – Cervantes
18 November 1999
A Bridge to Madness
Sancho Panza’s character is arguably the key to the success of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Sancho is the bridge that connects the reader to the insane and idealistic knight errant. In this respect, Sancho is almost the opposite of Don Quixote. Sancho is pragmatic, humble, and down to earth. He appears at first glance to be a simple man with few ambitions other than sleeping and eating. But his character is really more complex. After all, why does he agree to be Quixote’s squire in the first place? Why does he leave his wife and children to go on dangerous and uncomfortable adventures with someone who is obviously mad? Perhaps this reveals a slight madness on Sancho’s part. Perhaps Sancho actually believes that Don Quixote is going to win an island for him to rule. But I don’t think so. I think Sancho knows full well that Quixote is delusional and his promises are empty.
The reason Sancho accompanies and takes care of Don Quixote is because the mad man has inspired him, just as he inspires the reader. Despite Don Quixote’s ravings, we see that there is something uplifting and important about how he sees the world and what he wants to accomplish. He is trying to defy all the odds and single-handedly better the world, and his idealism is so exuberant it’s contagious. He spurs Sancho to adventure. This is why Sancho likes him. Sancho’s theme song in the musical “The Man of La Mancha” summarizes their relationship simply: “I, Sancho, follow my master ‘till the end, I tell all the world proudly: I’m his squire, I’m his friend.”
Furthermore, though he would never admit it, Don Quixote needs Sancho. One, because Sancho lives in the real world, he keeps Don Quixote alive by making sure they eat and sleep and so forth. He also provides some degree of reality-check when Don Quixote wants to attack a windmill or twenty goat-herders. More importantly, though, Sancho provides someone for Don Quixote to be an example for. By contrasting himself with Sancho and educating him about the ways of chilvary, Don Quixote reinforces and explains his own ideology. Sancho is also the witness for Don Quixote’s great deeds and sacrifices. Without Sancho’s understanding of him, no one else would know that there was more to Don Quixote than just an ordinary lunatic. In chapter 25, it is necessary for Sancho to watch Don Quixote beat himself naked so that Sancho can tell Dulcinea that Don Quixote is insane with love for her, just as Amadis and Roland were in the great chivalry tales that Don Quixote is imitating. (Don Quixote pretending to be mad is naturally ironic.)
Don Quixote takes the virtues of chivalry and courtly love to absurd levels, while Sancho appreciates people for who they are. This is most evident in chapter 25, when Don Quixote carries on about the delicate and ladylike virtues of Dulcinea del Toboso who Sancho recognizes as the strong and robust peasant girl Aldonza. Don Quixote explains his philosophy in a rare moment of lucidity: “…in my imagination, I draw her as I would have her be, both as to her beauty and her rank, unequaled by … any famous woman” (211). This is a remarkable contrast from the enchanters that Don Quixote normally blames for making everyone else perceive his giants as windmills or his golden helmet of Mambrino as a barber’s basin. Don Quixote shows his friend and the reader that his reality is no less valid than our own but quite a bit more romantic.