Two of the first modern characters in literature: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

It's actually quite amazing how many stories and how much mileage Miguel de Cervantes gets out of the very simple premise of "Don Quixote." I keep expecting the novel to run out of gas or out of ideas - but one episode after another, even though they're entirely predictable, DQ will see some perfectly ordinary phenomenon, like a guy approaching on a donkey, and he'll imagine that it's some great heraldic or chivalric encounter - Sancho Panza will warn him, futilely, and try to steer him toward sanity and safety, DQ will charge into action, get beaten and humiliated, Sancho will try to console him, and off they will go - but each episode is unique and funny and, though they illustrate the same theme and ideas over and over, there's a cumulative effect that makes this novel grand, epic - though it is a road novel, a picaresque, it doesn't really go anywhere - except around in circles - yet the characters deepen and become more rounded as the novel builds by accumulation of incident. As noted in previous posts, the overall theme seems to be the death of the antiquated notions (class, caste, a hierarchical society built on accepted notions of rank and obligation) in conflict with a modern view, in which people can survive and thrive based on individual merit and accomplishments - DQ thinks he's living in a feudal world but in fact he is at the dawn of the modern: DQ and SP are two of the first modern characters in literature.