Candide Essay

The late 17th and early 18th centuries were characterized by The Enlightenment; when revolutions in the patterns in society, science, and philosophy took place (Bristow). Many people started to look for reasoning in everyday life and religion, which more specifically led to the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther. As religion and the Catholic Church was questioned, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, an Enlightenment philosopher, invented the idea of philosophical optimism. Optimism stated that the the world was the “best of all possible worlds” because God created it. Voltaire, famous philosopher and author countered Leibniz’s idea in his novel Candide. Candide is a story about the a very naive character, named Candide, who ventures out into the world that Voltaire portrays as having a lot of suffering and consequently, not the “best of all possible worlds”. Because Voltaire disapproves of philosophical optimism, he uses satire to point out its fallacies by ridiculing the monarchy, exaggerating the perils of his characters, and by mocking the Church.

Voltaire ridicules the monarchy by expressing the aftermath of the senseless wars and killing of innocent people mandated by the kings. The constant war between the Bulgars and the Abares is immediately brought up in Candide which proves its significance to Voltaire’s argument. The war is characterized by the death that had a “total [that] may well have risen to thirty thousand souls” (Voltaire 20). Voltaire introduces the reader into a very detailed setting where there were “girls who had been disemboweled after satisfying the natural needs of several heroes [who] were breathing their last sighs” (Voltaire 21). Voltaire calls the soldiers that are essentially raping women “heroes” to...

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...philosophical optimism.

Candide is written to show human vices but also show Voltaire’s counter ideas to Leibniz’s optimism. Each one of the characters that Candide interacts with has their own specific folly that proves the world maybe isn’t all for the best. Pangloss is so optimistic that he is naive and conceded, the abbe in France is extremely greedy when she steals gems from Candide, and the Dervish who doesn’t question things is so passive that he isn’t very likeable. The ending of the novel concludes when Candide finds peace in the garden where he is working to escape the three evils in the world according to the Old Turk. Candide’s finding of peace can correlate with Voltaire being okay with life and the earth even though he sees suffering happen. Though the novel bashes on optimism, Voltaire’s acceptance life and of the world is a good example for anyone.