SP
Wears a St. Louis hat.
(Guest written by whiskybear)
The straight man to his master Don Quixote's bumbling incompetent, Sancho Panza is an agent of empiricism in Cervantes' masterpiece. While the knight errant is gripped by his fairytale quest, Sanco describes for his master the world as it actually appears -- the windmills are not giants, they are windmills; the sheep herds are not columns of advancing infantry, they are sheep herds; the wineskins are not dragons, they are wineskins (and a terrible waste to pierce with one's lance). But just as Don Quixote blindly pursues his own heroic idiom (derived from the books of chivalry that were essentially pulp novels of the 16th Century), Sancho willfully deludes himself into thinking that he will follow his master - -this frail and quite obviously insane man, who indiscriminately attacks windmills and wineskins with equal fervor -- all the way to the halls of Valhalla, where fame and untold riches await. To follow the master, the servant abandons home, family, and vocation (Farmer? Shepherd? Mudpile-mover-arounder?). In his novel, Cervantes poses to the reader an honest question: Between master and servant, which one is the more delusional?
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