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Candide's Shift In Faith Summary

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Candide's Shift In Faith Summary
‎ Candide’s Shift in Faith ‎
‎ ‎ ‎ ‎
Candide is classified as dystopian literature which is a literary form that aims to ‎distupt the human convictions and draw people to question what they take for granted. In ‎what follows, a deffinition for dystopian literature will be provided with further ‎explaining on how does Candid fit into this paradigm. Another point that will be ‎discussed is a set of ideas that Candid used in his novella like optimism, racism, religious ‎toleration, and women rights‎. The final discussion will be about Candide’s statement ‎‎“let’s cultivate our garden,” and wheather it pronounces his intention to ‎end his ‎intellectual journey and put words to action or it is a call for further investigation.‎

The
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‎One of the ideas he used was titled in “The Folly of Optimism, The Hypocrisy of ‎Religion, The Corrupting Power of Money, and Rape and Sexual Exploitation”. The Folly ‎of Optimism is a philosophy that took for granted that God existed, and since God was ‎perfect He would not create an imperfect world. According to this phylosophy, people ‎precieve imperfections in the world only because they do not understand God’s great ‎plan. Since Voltaire does not accept that a perfect God (or any God has to exist, he ‎mocked the idea that the world must be entirely good, and he heaps merciless satires on ‎this idea throughout his novel. Another idea that he used was The Hipocrisy of Religion. ‎Voltaire satirizes organized religion by means of a series of corrupt, hyprocritical relifious ‎leaders who appear throughout the novel. He also portrayed religious leaders as men who ‎carry out inhumane campaigns of religious opression against those who disagree with ‎them on even the smallest of theological matters. An example taken from the novel is the ‎inquisition persecutes Pangloss for expressing his ideas and Candide for merely listening ‎to them. Another one was The Corrupting Power of Money. When Candide acquires a ‎fortune in Eldorado, he thaught that the worst of his problems have passed, but the fact ‎was that his money made him even more unhappy. Later on, Candide discovered that ‎money was as …show more content…
This is demonstrated by all the characters that ‎are thinking about all the other things that they could have been doing with their lives ‎instead of what they were actually doing. At this point, Candide has lost his optimistic ‎view of life he had through the novel. Then, Candide settles into the life he is in, and said ‎that he have to make the best of what he has got. Up until the very end of the novel, ‎Candide was an advent follower of Pangloss’s philosophy. After he had experiences all ‎the hardship and seen how the farmer in Turkey dealt with what he had, Candide ‎responds to Pangloss after he essentially says that if they did not struggle through all the ‎trials that they went through, then they would not be together in the gorgeous garden. ‎Candide’s reply was “Yes, but we must cultivate our garden.” This statement is like the ‎Deist motto since Candide is essentially saying that we must be in control of our own ‎destiny. This relates back to Deism because Deists do believe that there is a God, but He ‎does not play any part in human lives. Because of this “clockwork” idea, God is not ‎present to control your fate, so it is back to you to “cultivate your garden”, or be in charge ‎of your own destiny. Candide’s quote is the perfect ending because it represented his ‎shift from the constant optimistic view, to a complete deist aspect.

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