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Wealth And Happiness In Voltaire's Candide

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The novel Candide, written by Voltaire, portrays the adventures and experiences of the main character named Candide. Being a very honest man, a character like Candide can be easily swayed and convinced to do and believe anything. From carelessness to greed, the reader can clearly understand that Voltaire ridicules many decisions and situations that occur in the novel. One of many themes Voltaire mocks in the novel would be how greed can result from wealth. What Voltaire is ultimately conveying to the reader is that money cannot buy happiness. Raised in Westphalia, Candide was surrounded by greed and his life was ultimately affected by strength and wealth. The phrase “everything is for the best,” taught by Master Pangloss, clouds Candide’s judgement and makes him careless. What Master Pangloss was trying to teach Candide was that with every cause there is an effect and that it is best of all possible worlds. For example, Candide stumbled upon a utopian society called El Dorado which was literally a city of gold. What seemed like pebbles to the residents who lived there were actually gems and bits of gold to Candide. Wealth and money is seen everywhere. Once Candide visited the city he was not the same. Even though Pangloss's philosophy …show more content…

Candide's carelessness can also come from his love for Cunegonde, his lover. The reader may assume that Candide’s love for Cunegonde blinds his judgement and results irresponsible and inattentive behavior. “When a man is in love, is jealous, and has been flogged by the Inquisition, he becomes lost to all reflection” (Voltaire pg 22). What Voltaire was trying to say was that a man is not himself when he is in love or is jealous. All Candide wants is to return to his lover so he would do anything to see her again. This may fuel his carelessness and irresponsibility to lose his

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The protagonist of Voltaire’s satirical piece, Candide, is notorious for his naivety and innocence seen throughout the course of his travels. As he experiences both, the good and the evil, he undergoes changes as a dynamic character. Candide’s gullibility in the beginning of the story is evident when he is coerced into the Bulgarian army and faces a tough decision: whether to be striked thirty-six times by the regiment or to be killed with poisonous lead. His initial response is that “human will is free” and that he shall choose neither one or the other (Voltaire 5). It is worth remembering that the idea of “free will” derived from Master Pangloss’ teachings, who indoctrinated his beliefs into Candide.

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To begin, Candide’s decisions in Voltaire’s “Candide” were often naive and senseless throughout the story. Candide’s decision to kiss Cunegonde puts a series of unfortunate events into motion. Kissing Cunegonde ultimately gets Candide banished from his town and sold into an army, where he is beat on several occasions. Throughout the story, Candide’s decision to blindly follow the unrealistic teachings of his tutor, Pangloss, constantly gets him into trouble. When an earthquake destroys the town and kills thousands of people, Candide follows Pangloss’ decision to spread news that the earthquake was necessary.

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One of his most famous works was Candide. It was written thirty years after his exile to England and inspired by influential people at the time, including Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Isaac Newton. In this novel, Voltaire expresses his disliking of optimism and how it is merely “false hope.” He believed that although we are sometimes put into bad situations, they would not always result in a greater good. The world is naturally evil, and evil is bound to exist in the universe one way or another.

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Still, their philosophy of the best of all possible worlds persists to be their reasoning for all these misfortunes. At the end of the story, Candide finally sheds this philosophy that so firm a grip over him after purchasing a farm and marrying the now horrifically disfigured Cunegonde. Voltaire seems to portray that optimism, at least the Leibnizian Optimism, is an absurd method of viewing the world as it has no context and application for the real

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Candide’s thought of trading his treasure for Cunegonde is his way of believing that he must endure suffering and lose part of his fortune to others to pursue love. Candide’s point of view of this situation illustrates a sympathetic manner for himself through his amiable character as he gives what the captain demands for . In addition, he fails to recognize that he is capable of withholding his fortune and be the master of his own thought, as he unsuccessfully distinguishes "universal reason" (Voltaire 27), and avoidable tribulation, by neglecting James as he was "thrown in the sea" (Voltaire 26). This neglectance of other’s lives that occurs more than once, demonstrates Candide’s slow development in his journey. The unceasing deaths, that scarcely sways him at first has somewhat allowed him to obtain maturity, but Candide fails to learn from his past, until he has lost it all.

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Voltaire’s Candide is a far-fetched humorous tale satirizing the theory of optimism as promoted by Rousseau and other philosophers of the Enlightenment age. The tale follows the adventures of Candide throughout the world where he witnesses disaster and evil. Throughout his adventures, the young man followed his tutor’s teachings believing that all is for the best (Voltaire, 1991). Voltaire uses the character Candide to counter optimism that he considered as an absurd ideology. Throughout the book, Voltaire attacks the philosophical optimism and all the systems that falsely justify the presence of disasters and evil in the world (Wootton 2000).

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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).

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Voltaire’s Candide takes us through the life and development of Candide, the protagonist. Throughout his adventures, he witnesses many travesties and sufferings. Like many Enlightenment philosophers, Pangloss, Candide’s tutor, is an optimist; this philosophy was adopted by many to help mask the horrors of the eightieth century. Pangloss teaches Candide that everything happens for a reason. Voltaire uses satire, irony and extreme exaggerations to poke fun at many aspects; such as optimism, religion, corruption, and social structures within Europe.

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In Candide Voltaire discusses the exploitation of the female race in the eighteenth century through the women in the novel. Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman suffer through rape and sexual exploitation regardless of wealth or political connections. These characters possess very little complexity or importance in Candide. With his characterization of Cunegonde, Paquette, and the Old Woman Voltaire satirizes gender roles and highlights the impotence of women in the 1800s. Cunegonde is the daughter of a wealthy German lord.

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Voltaire’s Candide: Essay Assignment Voltaire’s Candide represents the ideas of the Enlightenment in many ways. It embodies the main ideas of the Enlightenment; progress, optimism, and reason in more than one instance. Pangloss and Candide’s views embody optimism and Martin, reason. Candide by Voltaire, is an excellent representation of Enlightenment ideas. Voltaire’s character Pangloss is the epitome of optimism in the book Candide.

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Moreover, situations these forces create, and how they are beyond and within the control of Candide. Leading to Candide’s final beliefs, and how they illustrate the follies of optimistic determinism. At the beginning of Voltaire epic Candide is a naive scholar. He strongly adheres to the beliefs laid out for him by his mentor Pangloss.

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One key facet of living in the world today is the ability for people to have free will over their own lives. In Voltaire’s story “Candide,” it is clear to observe that although Candide is free to form his own decisions, he allows himself to be strongly determined by his surroundings as well as everyone who he encounters. This story proposes that Candide is trying to find a balance between submitting completely to the speculations and actions of others while also taking control of his life through blind faith. Throughout the story, Candide encounters frequent hardships along his voyage to prosperity. These obstacles include, but are not limited to becoming a bulwark, being beaten and forced to watch his beloved Pangloss having been hanged, leaving such an amazing place as Eldorado, being lied to and tricked out of diamonds by the abb`e, killing Cunegonde’s two lovers, almost being boiled alive for killing the monkey lovers, and being persuaded to be promiscuous on Cunegonde.

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The absurdity of the misfortunes the characters of Candide are subjected to is humorous for the reader, but the events that are based in fact and real-world issues are far more somber and depressing. They reveal a devastating truth about the world, going farther than just discrediting optimism, to the point of showing this world and society is doomed to be a dark pit of despair. Cunegonde eventually learns that her rape by the Bulgar was “the custom on such occasions” (Voltaire 19), that it was expected of soldiers to satisfy their “natural urges” (Voltaire 8) by forcing themselves onto the women they find after raiding a castle or village. Voltaire is explaining here that the events described in Candide are not just solitary acts committed by the worst people in the world but are acceptable actions in society. The burning down of cities-pillaging them and taking the survivors as slaves- is “in accordance with international law” (Voltaire 8).

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Through the protagonist Candide one can deduce Voltaire’s negative outlook on human nature. He believes every word that Pangloss says, in the same way that people of the day believed everything that the Church would say. At the beginning of the text he blindly worships Optimism and by the end of it he worships the Turk’s philosophy of labour. “I also know… that we must cultivate our garden” (Voltaire 99). However it does appear that Candide has gained more knowledge and wisdom and has therefore made a more informed decision.

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Candide literally means ‘truthful and straightforward’. Candide is also introduced as an optimistic, in fact one that studied under Dr. Pangloss. His mind had been so warped with the idea of everything being for the best, one can denote him as the most knowledgeable of optimism. Candide tells Cacambo on page 69 that optimism is “..a mania for insisting that everything is all right when everything is going wrong”. The man who was taught of the virtues and brainwashed to always believe in optimism defines optimism as a counter-insightful ideology.

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