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Study guide for Candide – some helpful stuff:
Candide parodies the philosophy of optimism
put forth by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz. ... Voltaire answered
back three years later with the tale of Candide.
The tale is a fantastic picaresque journey that
takes Candide around the world. ... ”
He is now Candide’s beloved valet and traveling
companion. ...
Towards the end, it is Cacambo who
arranges for Candide to find Cunégonde again. ...
Candide
The fantastically naïve young man who is “driven
from his earthly paradise” with hard kicks in
his backside is Candide. Like Everyman, from the
medieval morality play by that name, Candide experiences
as much as a man could experience in order
to arrive at a well-deserved conclusion regarding
the plight of man. ... Westphalia, so Candide was told, is
the best of all possible kingdoms. ...
It is suspected that Candide is the bastard offspring
of the Baron’s sister and a gentleman of the
neighborhood. ... Circumstances make
Candide a criminal, “I’m the kindest man in the
world, yet I’ve already killed three men, and two
of them were priests! ...
Lady Cunégonde
Cunégonde is Candide’s love interest. ...
Having caught the eye of the Grand Inquisitor,
she is then shared by the two men until rescued by
Candide. ... But instead of reunion
with Candide, she is taken by pirates and sold
into slavery. When Candide pays for her freedom,
she is old, ugly, and washing dishes. ... Candide gives him some money and loses
his bet with Martin. ... There they live on
Candide’s farm. ... He refuses to
allow Candide to marry Cunégonde, so Candide
runs him through with his sword.
After recovering from Candide’s assault, the
Baron is captured by the Spanish. ... Candide rescues him.
He lives with them in Turkey but when he refuses
to allow the marriage again, Candide arranges to
have him put back in the galleys. ...
Martin
Candide chooses Martin to be his traveling
companion. ...
Candide enjoys him so much that he
never parts with him.
The Negro
Although Candide had several encounters with
slavery, none is more memorable than the encounter
with the Negro. ... Pangloss tutors the baron’s son and Candide
in metaphysico-theologo-cosmonigology. ... He
winds up in the galley of a slave ship and is freed
by Candide. ... She winds up on Candide’s
farm, having spent the money he gave her.
Pococurante
Candide and Martin visit a Venetian senator
named Pococurante. ... Indeed,
Candide thinks that he is the happiest man
he’s ever seen because he is content with nothing
and seems to be forever in search of contentment
and novelty. ... ” Candide
sees his friend’s logic and counts himself fortunate,
yet again, that he has Cunégonde to look
forward to. ... Candide wonders, what is the best way
to approach life? In the story, Candide has been ed-
ucated in the system of optimism. It is all he knows,
but if Candide had been a flat enough character to
accept optimism, the book would be without hope.
Instead, Candide doubts the philosophy of optimism
and eventually rejects it.
The quest of Candide centers on whether the
doctrine of optimism taught by Dr. ...
If it is, optimism must be reconciled with what Candide
experiences. ...
Candide doesn’t find such incidental and simple
explanations for everyday occurrences as interesting
or as valid as his big question, “Do you
believe that men have always slaughtered each
other as they do today, that they’ve always been
liars … hypocritical and foolish? ... Candide eventually defines optimism
as, “a mania for insisting that everything is all right
when everything is going wrong.”
The only possible defense of optimism is Candide’s
luck, which is regularly recited as evidence
of that philosophy. ... ” Still, Candide realizes there is no perfection
in the world. ... ” The old man’s presentation
stands opposite to Candide’s experience of religion:
“You have no monks who teach, argue, rule, plot,
and burn people who don’t agree with them? ...
Happiness
Martin and Candide play a game as part of their
debate over optimism. ... Candide always bets that they
are, and he always loses. ... Candide’s experience
of war is as a conscripted soldier. ... For Voltaire,
through Candide, this meant that soldiers had the
right to rape every woman, plunder and pilfer every
village. ... Candide journeys through a series of such gardens. ... However, the best garden, like
the best bed, turns out to be the one Candide makes
himself. ... Through the exposure of man’s follies
in the insane but fantastic adventure of Candide,
his satire is fresh for all time. ...
Candide is a picaresque novel. Candide is
forced by fate to ramble about the world collecting
people and losing them, gaining riches and losing
it all. ...
Candide is a dazzling display of ridiculously
brutal situations that dramatize the many evils of
human experience. ... Voltaire explores this subject
through Candide’s many misadventures;
indeed, understanding Candide’s haphazard growth
is necessary for understanding the development of
the story, which often seems patternless. But one
cannot understand Candide without also understanding
those around him and the roles that they
play in the story. ... When
Jacques is thrown overboard during a storm, Pangloss
prevents Candide from trying to save him by
“proving that the bay of Lisbon had been formed
expressly for this Anabaptist to drown in.” Instead
of reacting with compassion, like Candide, or even
explaining that Candide will only die in the futile
attempt to retrieve his friend, Pangloss resorts to a
bold-faced absurdity that excuses his passivity and
callousness. ... By pairing Candide
with such emblematic yet compelling figures,
Voltaire highlights Candide’s reactions to the guidance
others provide him. And, because most of
these characters remain unchanged in their basic attitudes,
the reader can trace Candide’s sometimes
erratic development. First, of course, Voltaire depicts
Candide under Pangloss’s influence. ... For example, even though he stays with
Candide and the group on their farm, he does so
only because “things are just as bad wherever you
are” and working without argument is “the only
way of rendering life bearable. ... He longs
for nothing and is besieged by the malady that
haunts Candide and the others in Constantinople:
boredom. Though Candide thinks Pococurante a
“genius” and “the happiest of all men, for he is superior
to everything he possesses,” Martin recognizes,
as always, the man’s true misery. ... She
often moves quickly to save herself, Cunégonde,
and Candide, such as when she calmly arranges
their escape after Candide kills Issachar and the
Grand Inquisitor. ... He aids
both Candide and Pangloss because they are fellow
men in need, not because he hopes to exploit them. ... His most exemplary characteristic
is his devotion to Candide, whom he supports
simply because Candide is “a very good fellow.”
He even works to fulfill Candide’s plan to
rescue Cunégonde from Buenos Ayres, though he
could, as Martin believes he has, run off with the
jewels from Eldorado and avoids his eventual enslavement
by a deposed monarch. ... Candide, while generally
likable because of his genuineness and compassion,
is a parodic version of the bildungsroman hero,
who matures while being subjected to many trials.
Candide’s gullibility is so extreme, his trials so outrageous,
and his reactions so farcically naive that
he often appears ridiculous. ... These desires,
though, keep Candide moving forward, pursuing a
goal, and believing in the possibility of happiness. ... In the world
of Candide, that makes him a fit, if comic, hero. ... Wolper holds
that Voltaire satirizes Candide, depicting him as a
man who has learned nothing and who, in effect,
helps to perpetuate inequality and suffering. The
tone of Voltaire’s presentation and the fact that
Candide remains essentially decent would seem to
qualify both of these interpretations, however. ... Also, to say that
their decision reflects a cowardly retreat into Candide’s
petty fiefdom ignores the fragile mutual understanding
the characters develop, as well as the
process of reaching this understanding. ... Hutton
In the following excerpt, Hutton argues that
the fulfillment of Candide’s need for companionship
is essential to resolving the problem of “how
a good man can live in an evil world.”
Few literary works of the Enlightenment have
enjoyed the enduring acclaim of Voltaire’s Candide. ...
Without pressing the analogy too far, it would
not be inaccurate to say that recent Candide criticism
has produced its own schools of optimists and
pessimists. ... Barber) interpret
Candide as a philosophy of hope—an affirmation
of the author’s faith in the possibility of limited
but real social progress. ... But Candide,
for these scholars, is not only a profession of
faith. ...
In composing Candide, Voltaire came to terms with
the deeper issue of what the relationship between
thought and action ought to be. ... Weightman, for example) read Candide as a
philosophy of despair—an expression of the author’s
mordant insights into the demonic mysteries
of the human predicament. The meaning of Candide,
these scholars contend, is to be derived from
Voltaire’s conclusion that man is unable to bridge
the gap between his powers of rational thought and
his largely instinctual activity. ... Interpreted in this light,
Candide represents a personal catharsis for the author
rather than a message to “enlighten” his age.
Perhaps the inability of the critics to arrive at
a consensus about the meaning of Candide stems
from the limitations of the conceptual framework
in which they have so long approached the novel. ... The
question which Candide raises is not the speculative
one of the religious apologists of the seventeenth
century, i. ... The greatness
of Candide is related to the intensity of
Voltaire’s concern about the relationship of man to
his fellow man—his sensitive understanding that
all men, optimists and pessimists alike, must journey
through life by experiencing suffering that is
incomprehensible, and that there is far more solace
in making that journey in good company than in
isolation.
Approximate Word count = 8206
Approximate Pages = 32.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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