The Corruption Of Tragedy In Voltaire's Candide

Voltaire’s Candide, an 18th century satirical novella, details the tale of a young man, named Candide, after his expulsion from the castle he lived in. Candide suffers many misfortunes during his resulting travels and encounters several conflicting perspectives on how to interpret human nature and the world around us. Candide’s boredom with the life around him becomes a constant factor throughout the text and appears prominently when Candide resides in the castle, when he arrives at El Dorado, and when he decides to settle on the farm. Voltaire uses these situations to depict boredom’s detrimental effects and to suggest that boredom leads to all tragedy.

The text begins by describing Candide’s residence at a castle in Westphalia. Candide

He eventually reunites with several of the characters, and at the old woman’s recommendation, he purchases some farmland. While the previous examples portray instances in which Voltaire displays the harm that boredom can cause, Voltaire uses the text’s conclusion to indicate the benefits of a lack of boredom. After living on the farm for some time, the old woman asks the group to choose the greater evil: the tragedies they endured, or the boredom they experience on the farm [46]. Voltaire answers this question by introducing a Turkish farmer who remarks that there exists “three great evils – idleness, vice, and poverty” [47]. Note that Voltaire affirms that idleness, not the tragedies that occur, equates to evil, and so one can see that Voltaire considers boredom as more detrimental than the tragedies. When asked what he knows about the recent strangling in Constantinople, the farmer discloses how and why he prefers to remain ignorant of such tragedies in society: “‘I am entirely ignorant of the evil you speak of; I presume that in general such as are concerned in public affairs sometimes come to a miserable end; and that they deserve it… I am contented with sending thither the produce of my garden, which I cultivate with my own hands’” [47]. After this discussion with the farmer, Pangloss remarks to Candide, “‘…when man was put into the garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it; and this proves that man was not born to be idle’” [47]. While Voltaire presents most of Pangloss’ speech satirically, Pangloss utters this quote in an entirely serious manner, and one can regard it as Voltaire’s attempting to voice explicitly his beliefs. By viewing the garden at the end of the novella as the Garden of Eden, the utopia humanity originated from, Voltaire ultimately concludes that the ideal life for humans