Candide

Within the pages of Candide Voltaire portrays the ideas of pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger and greed outside of paradise and in the imperfect world. As Voltaire incorporates these he also expresses his cogitations of the lunacy of optimism, the impracticality of philosophic conjecture, the noxious powers of money, the sanctimonious quality of religion along with the thoughts resurrection of the body, sexual exploitation and oppression.

Pangloss teaches, or better yet dictates, to the passive Candide that “everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Voltaire portrays the philosophy with the idea the presence of any evil in the world, without reason or serving a greater good, would be a signal that God is partly malefic and not entirely benefic or not omnipotent. The optimist and the non-opinionated , Pangloss and Candide, were subjected to and witnessed a variety of horrors “flogging”, rapes, robberies, executions, disease, natural disasters , and betrayals. These unfortunate happenings do not seem to serve any obvious greater good, and therefore only point to the cruelty and lunacy of humanity. Pangloss struggles to search for justification of the terrible happenings in the real world, but his arguments are absurd, , for example, when he remarks that syphilis needed to be transmitted from the Americas to Europe so that Europeans could indulge in the delicacy’s such as that of chocolate. More and experienced and thoughtful characters, such as the “old woman”, Cacambo, and Martin , have all reached negative (pessimistic) conclusions about the world they live in.

One of the most predominant flaws in Pangloss’s optimism philosophy is that it is based on abstract philosophical evidence rather than concrete real-world evidence. In the disorderly world of Candide or Optimism , philosophical conjecture repeatedly proves to be unhelpful and even at times destructive. Time after time , it prevents people from making realistic judgments of the world surrounding them and from taking action to change adverse situations. While Jacques the Anabaptist drowns after falling of the ship in to the Lisbon bay, Pangloss stops Candide from making any attempt at saving him by making a point that adheres to his theory, that the Lisbon bay was simply created for Jacques the Anabaptist to drown in ( I wonder if he would have said he would have said the same thing if it was him drowning in the bay).While Candide lies under rubble after the Lisbon earthquake, Pangloss ignores Candide’s requests for wine and oil and instead struggles constantly to prove the justfications of the earthquake.

When Candide journeys to Eldorado and acquires fortune, it looks as if he’s found everlasting utopia and the worst of his problems might be over. Yet , if anything, Candide is comparatively unhappier as a wealthy man because like Voltaire portrays a human’s greed and how one can never be fully satisfied and how one always see the grass as meing greener on the other side. In fact, Candide’s optimism seems to reach an all-time low after Vanderdendur cheat him. At this point that he chooses to make the pessimist Martin his traveling companion realizing his money constantly attracts false friends. Count Pococurante’s money drives him to such weary tedium that he couldn’t appreciate the great things in life. The money that Candide gives Brother Giroflйe