Does Voltaire Criticize Ideas In Candide Or Optimism?
As a French writer, Voltaire was born to a rich French family. During his life he used to be against the government, and this had caused him to imprison twice and also exiled because of his writings that were significantly against the government. Regarding these reactions from the government, he decided to travel to England and different countries in the centre of Europe and at the end he lived in Switzerland as he continued his writings until his eighties (Besterman, 1972). At the age of the enlightenment there were different schools of philosophy. In his novella, "Candide or Optimism", Voltaire criticizes the ideas if these schools through the contact of his main character "Candide" with different characters in the novel like "Martin and
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The murder he met in the Abarian territories shacked his belief in optimism. The earthquake also shacked his belief of optimism as many innocent people died. At the beginning of the novella he finds no reason for dismissing him out of the castle as he was dismissed because of love. He also didn’t find the reason that his mother didn’t get married to his father convincible. This made him an illegitimate child. The refusal of the people of Holland to feed him also shacked his belief of optimism. Candide continuously faces the evil in its most extreme forms. In the case of the earthquake, where there is no man to blame, in addition to the most of all human evil like wars which caused by man. When Candide met Pangloss begging who has nothing to eat. He also contracted syphilis "a beggar all covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak, snuffling and coughing most violently" (Voltaire, 2005. P: 8) When Candide tells Pangloss that the disease he has is the devil work. Pangloss answers him "we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal" (Voltaire, 2005. P: 9), if Columbus hadn’t been to the new world, we wouldn’t have these good things like chocolate and cochineal. The bad thing "Syphilis" ended in the good things chocolate and
The murder he met in the Abarian territories shacked his belief in optimism. The earthquake also shacked his belief of optimism as many innocent people died. At the beginning of the novella he finds no reason for dismissing him out of the castle as he was dismissed because of love. He also didn’t find the reason that his mother didn’t get married to his father convincible. This made him an illegitimate child. The refusal of the people of Holland to feed him also shacked his belief of optimism. Candide continuously faces the evil in its most extreme forms. In the case of the earthquake, where there is no man to blame, in addition to the most of all human evil like wars which caused by man. When Candide met Pangloss begging who has nothing to eat. He also contracted syphilis "a beggar all covered with scabs, his eyes sunk in his head, the end of his nose eaten off, his mouth drawn on one side, his teeth as black as a cloak, snuffling and coughing most violently" (Voltaire, 2005. P: 8) When Candide tells Pangloss that the disease he has is the devil work. Pangloss answers him "we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal" (Voltaire, 2005. P: 9), if Columbus hadn’t been to the new world, we wouldn’t have these good things like chocolate and cochineal. The bad thing "Syphilis" ended in the good things chocolate and