Candide Voltaire’s Classic Satire
Uploaded by bulldawg on Oct 27, 2011
This essay examines one chapter of Voltaire’s classic satire.
I Introduction
Candide is Voltaire’s scathing attack on some of the beliefs current in his day; specifically Optimism. This is the idea that this world, being created by God, who is Good, is thus the best of all possible worlds. Such a philosophy requires its believers to do some fancy footwork to explain away the vast amount of evil that flourishes in the world of men. Optimists got around it by propounding the idea that God created everything for the best, and even if people have personal misfortunate, that misfortune is somehow working for the greater good. (“Attacking Optimism,” PG).
Voltaire took dead aim at this philosophy in Candide, in which he subjects Candide and his companions, decent people, to a series of harrowing adventures. (Perhaps it would be better to say that they lurch from catastrophe to catastrophe.) In so doing, he graphically illustrates the fact that this is hardly the “best of all possible worlds,” and that the Optimistic philosophy can often lead its adherents to some of the most idiotic conclusions it’s possible to imagine.
II Discussion
The story is, as I’ve said, one catastrophe after another, often involving torture, murder, gruesome tales of people hacked, burned, stabbed and raped. But it’s also very funny. I’m going to take a look at Chapter Five, because it’s outrageous and gives the “flavor” of the entire work. Chapter Five is titled “A Tempest, a Shipwreck, an Earthquake, and What Else Befell Dr. Pangloss, Candide, and James, the Anabaptist.”
The first thing to notice is that the chapter title provides a list of the sort of misery the characters undergo; the second thing of importance is that these chapters are extremely short. I’m reading the work on-line, but if I had a printed copy, the majority of the 30 chapters would run probably no more than 3-4 pages. Thus, to pack a tempest, shipwreck, earthquake, and the subsequent events that overtook the characters in the space of a few hundred words has the effect of cramming the disasters together with no room for the characters or the reader to take a breath. When people are tossed around in a terrible storm, we share their seasickness, their fear, and their wish that it would all be over soon and they could sail into port. ...