Desire For Love In Voltaire's Candide

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Desire for Love

In the novel Candide, Voltaire reveals the love that Candide has for Cunégonde is worth leaving the perfect world of El Dorado and back to a flawed society so he can be with his love (When they were at the frontiers of the Oreillons… he said, I may well find Cunégonde again’’ (52-66). Candide’s life has been a series of peculiar adventures. Candide’s tutor, Dr. Pangloss, teaches him that everything that happens in this world is for the best and he accepts those teachings as absolute truth. After being exiled from his childhood home, he joins the army, escapes the Inquisition, travels to South America, discovers the utopia city of El Dorado, and is finally reunited with his true love Cunégonde. El Dorado is unlike the rest …show more content…

Candide is exemplifying the force of love as an overpowering emotion that caused irrational behavior. For example, the king of El Dorado expresses how preposterous the thought of leaving El Dorado is, ““You are doing a foolish thing,” the king said to them. “I know that my country is not much; but when a person is reasonably well off somewhere he should stay there” (58). Leaving the perfection of El Dorado for the imperfect outside world is irrational. Especially since Candide’s life has been full of insane adventures. The desire Candide has for Cunégonde is much stronger than the reality of dealing with the real world full of evil. After being fooled and taken advantage of back in the real world; Candide is upset, “This procedure completed Candide’s despair; true, he had endured misfortunes a thousand times more painful; but the cold-bloodness of the judge, and of the captain by whom he had robbed, inflamed his bile and plunged him into a black melancholy. The wickedness of men appeared to his mind in all its ugliness; he fed only on sad ideas” (63). Candide had lived a life full heartache and chaos but after leaving such a perfect world and being slapped in the face with greed from others it really gets him down. But he knew that the choice to to leave El Dorado and search for Cunégonde would not be easy. But the irrational choice to give up perfection for love was an easy one to make since his Candide desire for Cunégonde is the strongest force in his

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