Pangloss once said, "There is no effect without a cause, and that this is the best of all possible worlds". Candide was tempted by the beauty of lady Cunegonde in the book Candide by Voltaire. It caused him to loose his house and access to meals. Nothing but misfortune for poor Candide. Pushed around, stolen from and almost killed, all for the love of his life lady Cunegonde.
The novella Candide (translates into optimism) is a work of Voltaire used to express his thoughts on optimism, injustice, and philosophy. Candide is introduced as a naïve and simple-minded optimistic boy, which then evolves into a practical and tough young man in the conclusion. Candide’s motivation of his love for Cunegonde takes him on a journey of self-improvement, filled with injustice and a change in philosophy. Will Candide’s journey give him another perspective on his philosophy or will he remain naïve and optimistic?
Voltaire’s Candide explores many philosophical ideas in its interesting and lengthy text. While there are many concepts and topics Voltaire addresses within this story, a notable topic that is touched upon would be Candide’s decision to leave the land of El Dorado and return to the outside world, ultimately settling down in a Turkish garden. Voltaire’s decision to have Candide return to society is a commentary on Man’s necessity to cultivate his own destiny. Voltaire brings Candide to the utopia of El Dorado to expose Candide to a place where a person could easily and quietly live out the rest of their life. The initial introduction to the land of El Dorado describes a place where the land “was tended for pleasure as well as profit; everywhere
Candide is considered one of Voltaire’s influential pieces of work and was full of over the top stock characters and bizarre situations. The satirical work is set up as a long epic following the adventures of the young and fair hero Candide and his quest to find and marry his beloved Cunégonde. Candide meets many different extraordinary people and has several different companions that travel with him throughout Europe as well as the New World Along the way many of these companions and acquaintances are brutally killed and a few turn out to not be as dead as expected. In the end, Candide and company do not end up with an ideal happy ending that was expected. Cunégonde becomes unattractive and the money gathered in El Dorado is used up or stolen,
J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quote, “The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.” can be interpreted in innumerable ways. Voltaire's novella Candide resonates strongest negatively, with the pessimist’s view superseding the optimist’s view. Though a pessimist is someone who always sees the bad factors and worst possible results of any situation, Candide is not a story filled with negative thoughts even in the perfect circumstances; or gloomy with a quitter-esque attitude.
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire was the French creator of the novel titled Candide, otherwise called "Confidence". A number of Voltaire's works were famous in Europe amid his time, yet it is his mocking novel, Candide, which is still concentrated today. In Candide, Voltaire sought to bring up the doubt of Gottfried William von Leibniz's criticizing so as to reason the wrongs of the world, the hypothesis of good faith, and the ruthlessness of war. Leibniz gathered that God, being able to pick from any of the quantity of universes, picked this world, "the most ideal of all worlds"(18).
Candide holistically represents the Enlightenment ideal of equality among men in its criticism of the aristocracy at the top of the social hierarchy. From the very start of the novella, the idea of “superiority by birth” is mocked through exaggerations of the actions and beliefs of noble characters. For example, Candide is forbidden from marrying Cunegonde because her family does not approve of the fact that “he could prove only seventy-one generations of nobility” (15) to her seventy-two. The hyperbole within this minute difference in lineage parodies the pretention and arrogance with which higher-status people of that era conducted themselves. Despite this manner of supposed superiority, however, nobility are often subject to greed, vice,
In the story Candide, by Voltaire, El Dorado shaped the life of Candide. The events that happened in El Dorado shaped Candides philosophy. Candide experienced the world, though that he would grow as a person. Candide is thrown out of the castle because he kissed Cunegonde. In the beginning of the book Candide has little experience of how cruel the world is outside the castle.
Optimism in Voltaire’s Candide and Pope’s Essay on Man While both Voltaire and Alexander Pope hold optimistic views on the world, they reach very different types of optimism through very different approaches. Pope’s optimism is grounded in determinism, a system of faith that puts the reigns in the hands of a higher power and states that all things happen in furtherance of some ultimate goal. Voltaire’s optimism, on the other hand, is grounded in his belief in free will and the weight of one’s decisions.
The famous saying by Forrest Gump, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get," reflects greatly in the Candide by Voltaire and Gulliver ’s Travels by Jonathon Swift. The actions and choices made by the central characters in these two stories have a reflection on how their future lives will play out.