Voltaire's Candide: New World Characteristics

Michael Shoff

Dr. Jesson

HON 112-04

1 February 2018

Candide: New World Characteristics Voltaire lived at the estate of Ferney where his main goals were to make the estate more profitable and to improve the lives of the peasants and slaves that worked there. The absence of wealth, and the acceptance of strangers appear in Voltaire’s work Candide. Voltaire expresses these concepts in contrast with current European concepts when Candide travels to the New World. Voltaire describes strangers being welcomed into unknown territory when Candide and Cacambo travels to El Dorado. When they arrived in El Dorado, they were immediately welcomed in the inn by “two servant-girls, dressed in cloth of gold [who] invited them to sit down at the table” and were served a variety of courses in dishes of “rock crystal” (XVII.68). Candide and Cacambo were instantly accepted into this new country and were treated as if they were members of

While wealth represents status in Europe, gold and other precious jewels were not regarded as such. In El Dorado, Voltaire describes Candide “picking up rubies, emeralds, and gold that the children dropped and returning them to the schoolmaster who threw them on the ground” (XVII.68). The people of El Dorado did not care for the precious jewels that were found all over the island. Voltaire shows what was more important in El Dorado’s culture when Candide says, “The king’s children in this country must have an excellent education since they are taught to show such a contempt for gold and precious stones” (XVII.68). Voltaire believes that education should come before wealth and status, which El Dorado is a proponent of. However, in Europe, wealth was a major factor in deciding one’s fate and marriage and everything in between. Voltaire believes that wealth is merely an object and that education can provide much more than any gold or precious