Candide

Candide is a satirical social commentary Voltaire used to voice his views in the 18th century. Voltaire wrote this book during the Age of Enlightenment. Throughout the novel, Voltaire satirizes many aspects of European life during this era through the naïve and simple protagonist Candide and his ever optimistic mentor Pangloss. From religion to the aristocracy, Voltaire takes a stab at various aspects of medieval European life. He also indirectly states that life in 18th century Europe was filled with corruption and flaws. The novel starts out with Candide being banned from the castle after kissing Cunegonde. Then the novel erratically moves forward with different tragic stories. Candide is then forced into military service and almost dies as a result of attempted escape. He then reunites with his former mentor Pangloss. Pangloss then tells Candide of the ensuing events after his departure. Then they travel to Lisbon and the city is devastated by fire, earthquake, and tsunamis. This event was a mirror image of the real 1755 Lisbon earthquake. This event nearly wiped out the entire city as this earthquake was one of the deadliest earthquakes ever. After this destructive earthquake shattered the city, Pangloss still maintained his optimism theory that this world is the best of all worlds. At this point in the novel, Candide is still naïve enough to believe in Pangloss’s theory. However, he slowly begins to realize that Pangloss’s theory is flawed as he experiences many more tragic events. I think that Pangloss represents the overly optimistic critics Voltaire faced during his lifetime while Candide represents the immature and naïve common people. An important philosophy Pangloss believes is that all the events in this world happen for the best outcome. On the surface, it seems like this philosophy only refers to this world being the best of all worlds. However, it has a deeper meaning that free will is not an absolute necessity since all the events in this world have to occur for the best outcome. Voltaire is strongly opposed to this idea as he believes that human free will is an absolute necessity. He conveys his views through Candide as he rejects Pangloss’s overly optimistic theory at the end of the novel. Being as naïve as he is, Candide somehow believed in this optimistic theory throughout the novel even though he directly witnessed thousands of men needlessly dying during war, villages getting slaughtered, women being constantly raped, and natural disaster seeming to strike at every opportunity it gets. He finally begins to change his views and reject this silly optimism theory after stumbling onto El Dorado. Because El Dorado is a utopia where everything is perfect, Candide directly sees that Pangloss’s optimism theory only applies within a utopia like El Dorado. Now that he has seen a perfect world, he can now compare the real world to it and realizes that Pangloss’s theory can not be applied to the outside world. At the very end of the novel, Candide states that “we must cultivate our garden.” This means that he believes people shouldn’t believe in any single philosophy that governs the universe and life but instead they should try to find out on their own.