Candide Love Analysis

The Difference between Needing and Wanting
Almost every novel written has some kind of motif on romantic love from Romeo and Juliet to The Fault in Our Stars and Candide proves to be no different. Through Candide and Cunegonde’s extremely complicated relationship, Voltaire emphasizes the lesson that love is a wasted yet encompassing struggle. Candide has always had strong feelings for Cunegonde, from their first kiss he was hooked, every adventure throughout his entire, overarching journey was for her. He committed multiple murders and left the paradise-on-earth El Dorado all for Cunegonde. Every time he would get to her, fate would find a way to distance Candide from his one “true love” and that only pushed Candide further in his mission to marry Cunegonde so that “[they] may die of joy together.” Finally, finally reunited to his
A deeper analysis into Candide reveals that, despite all the mention of love, Voltaire does not include a true, deep, and classical interpretation of romantic love. Ironically, with the insightful emphasis on optimism through characters like Pangloss and Candide, he brings a rather pessimistic view of love- one of the biggest themes overarching the novel. What’s also extremely interesting is that as Candide realizes his relationship with Cunegonde is baseless and that he doesn’t truly love Cunegonde, his perspective on life is shattered leaving him behind with a more realistic life. Voltaire is stating through that moment in the book, that the need for love is an all-consuming thought and with or without it anyone is essentially predetermined to a botched life. In fact cultivating the garden seems to be an analogy of how no matter how much one harvests, no matter how much one plots, life is essentially going to provide the same result- a fruitless