WHAT´S IN HIS SOUL?
Sancho Panza and Don Quixote are treated as really funny people by other characters, stressing their continuous misjudgement and nonsense as a positive factor. At first Sancho appears materialistic, he only thinks of drinking, eating, sleeping and noble titles to his daughter.
http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/reviews/flores.pdf
Sancho stops being innocent and gets
corrupted tricking
others instead of getting tricked, criticising Dorotea, whom he believes
princess Micomicona, when she kisses Don Fernando or even calling Miss
Rodriguez old woman when he gets to the Dukes´palace after asking her to
take care of his donkey. At the time it was thought that those who lacked
literacy were unable of neither cleaning the dark side of their souls nor
acquiring better moral values, that is why Sancho, being a representative of
that group lets the reader eventually notice his inner malice, turning into
a villain at some points of the novel. Some other times, Sancho seems faith,
flawless and naturally innocent, giving Don Quixote his best, proving to be
humble and thankful for what Don Quixote gives him. This makes Sancho a
double-faced character who also receives from Cervantes features that did
not belong to those who worked the land, as Sancho is undeniably discrete
and that was a feature that belonged to nobles, not workmen or villains, as
discretion usually goes along with intelligence.
(Buenaventura
Pinero.1976.“Devenir social de Sancho Panza”.Caracas: Instituto
Universitario Pedagógico de Caracas.)
1605´s Sancho from the first part of Don Quixote is somewhat different from 1615´s Sancho Panza from the second part of Don Quixote in many ways. In the second part Sancho behaves much differently, he is more talkative getting to the point of interrupting Don Quixote´s speeches or even the Dukes´, he is less polite than in the first part, more independent from Don Quixote as we see when Sancho pushes the knight away to avoid getting hit with a strap. In the second part Sancho laughs at Don Quixote and makes fun of him to prove he is over Don Quixote even being his squire, that would be part of his “quijotización” which some people believe to be gradual but some other studies state it is a rupture produced specifically between 1605´s and 1615´s squire.
(Leif Sletsjoe. 1961. “Sancho Panza, hombre de bien”. Madrid: Insula.)
Sancho is thought to be Mark Twain´s inspiration in "Huckleberry Finn" among other works of his own. Mark Twain not only mentions Don Quixote in his book but he also elaborated Tom and Huck inspired on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Huck has Sancho´s realism and the couple is very much like Sancho and Don Quixote but this time Sancho´s counterpart Huck is turned into the central character of the story.
(Stanley T.
Williams. "Some Spanish Influences on American Fiction. Mark Twain to Willa
Cather