We Must Cultivate Our Garden Analysis

In class we had a discussion about the final of the chapter of the book, Candide, where Candide said, “We must cultivate our garden.” In our class discussion we talked about what could Candide possibly mean by this statement. To me what this statement was a response throughout all the events he encountered during his adventure to Cunegonde and although it wasn’t said, it was implied that he also wanted an answer to deal with life. The reason I say this is because in the novel we meet Pangloss the philosopher of optimism and he was Candide’s mentor, being that he was Candide’s mentor of course Candide would follow Pangloss’s words. However, Pangloss’s words of optimism seems to have fallen through because with each and every event Candide encounters there were not of great outcomes, for example, when Candide was infatuated with Cunegonde in the castle, they ended up kissing, but as for Candide he got kicked out of the castle. After Candide was kicked out the castle he finds out that his lover Cunegonde was killed which turned out to be false, but then Cunegonde was taken away from him again. Even with all of these events going wrong Candide still kept the optimism going, but as time passes it seems as if him believing in this philosophy starts to waver. The final chapter revealed what Candide thought was philosophically right and that is to just work, take responsibility of our actions, and that we are in charge of our

I feel like that is also what Voltaire was trying to satirize, the way we as humans sometimes for the most part don’t take responsibility for our own actions, we are always placing blame on something else rather than ourselves. In addition, we are always thinking about these what ifs and never doing sometimes and that is a problem. Being that we are so worried about irrelevant events, it deters us from what is actually