Voices: Candide by Voltaire

Voltaire’s short novel, Candide synthesizes the main conflicts that brewed and erupted during the Enlightenment of the 18th Century: reason vs. rationalization.

Born François Marie Arouet in 1694, Voltaire’s formative years were spent in Paris, where he contributed to what would become the city’s long-standing reputation for protesting government and church doctrine. Francois Marie Arouet often expressed his detest of the French government’s lack of willingness to act on behalf of the poor. He worked as an assistant to a lawyer in Paris, was appointed as a secretary to the French ambassador in the Netherlands, kicked out for presumably trying to elope with a French refugee woman named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer, and thrown in and out of jail and exile by the French government—all before his mid twenties! It is after his incarceration inside the Bastille in 1717 that Francoise Marie Arouet assumed the pen name, Voltaire. Historians and writers have attributed the adopted name to many aspects of Voltaire’s early life, including its semblance to the name of his family’s boat “Airvault”. However, most feel the pen name speaks to “voltage” and "speed", and Voltaire’s penchant for quick wit and sharp retorts. He developed a taste for satire, and this interest—coupled with a growing anger over the lack of equality amongst men during 18th Century France—made Voltaire a key player and dangerous threat to challenging traditional thoughts.

At a time when the religious authorities had much more involvement in political policy, much of the leading thought was that everything happens in a rationalized way—for the good of all things. Enlightenment thinkers—Voltaire in particular—saw fault with this idea for a number of reasons. For one, rationalization was used as an enabler for church and aristocratic despotism. The aristocracy used the idea of rationalization to promote ongoing chains in noble rule. Church doctrine condoned prejudice and fear tactics by having witch hunts and public persecutions against persons with different religious ideologies. With this, there was a sort of blissful optimism that French society co-signed with because the church and the aristocracy wrote these acts off as being necessary. It is that sentiment exactly that Voltaire satirizes in Candide (optimism) through his blissful protagonist of the same name. At a time when science and theoretical ideas were developing, many Enlightenment champions found scientific evidence of why there were natural disasters, or why people died, to be more reasonable than simply saying they were means working toward the same good ending.

Published in 1759, Candide is about satirizing blissful optimism (or blissful ignorance as Voltaire might describe it) and hypocrisy. It is not wholeheartedly about one person, though Candide is the protagonist, but rather a cross section of groups that Voltaire wishes to criticize. Each character represents a different part of that cross section. Candide is the Every Man. Voltaire paints a portrait of a kind-hearted and naïve young man living in a castle with little to no worries. He has an equally naïve mentor named Pangloss who is well versed in “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology” who schools Candide in the belief that everything is the “best of all possible worlds.” According to Pangloss, there can be no better world than the one we are in. If there were, we would be living there. It is evident that Voltaire is comparing Pangloss to and taking jabs at the famous philosopher Leibniz, who believed that God created the world, and thus created the best world possible for humans to live. The Grand Inquisitor that Candide encounters plays the role of the hypocritical church. Other characters like Martin leverage the philosophical rationalizations by interjecting more realistic viewpoints of the world.

With Candide, Voltaire essentially creates a tape recorder without a stop or pause button. Characters who are otherwise innocent endure terrible misfortune after misfortune. Voltaire’s delivery is stark and unyielding until the very last page. He in no way tends to mollify the plight of his characters. When they are mutilated, burned, tortured, raped, subjected to cannibalism, and all together left for dead Voltaire takes three paragraphs to allow you to collect your nerves before moving on to the next blunder. It’s not because he does not not care about or want a better outcome for his troupe; Voltaire is simply taking jabs at philosophical doctrine that waves its hand over human atrocities and says, “But it’s for the good of all things”.

In viewing Voltaire’s work and whether or not one agrees with his stance on rationalization over reason, the answer seems relevant. In reading any type of history on people, it is important to understand the context or the time frame in which the events occurred. The way most people view optimism in the 21st Century is not the same view of optimism—wayward or not—that Voltaire was lashing out against during the 18th Century. On the whole, churches in the modern Western world are not burning heretics at the stake for the public good. There is a larger divide between religion and politics, and knowledge across all fields is much more expansive.

The pace of Candide is steady, and Voltaire keeps your eyes wide and mind racing with every page. He strips back layers of society and removes comfort bubbles, and lays everything bare. Landscapes that started out lush eventually become barren battlefields. Even though Voltaire approaches the misfortunes of his characters in a raw manner, there are still pockets of soul and sympathy. When Candide, beaten down and near exhaustion, happens upon a dying Negro slave he feels the most empathy because he recognizes a man who is essentially helpless and innocent, and that despite being so he is not immune to the horrors of the world.

Despite satirizing optimism, Voltiare is not against it, as is evidenced by the book's ending. Candide stands in a garden reminiscent of the Garden of Eden and says to his surviving troupe, “Let us cultivate our garden.” To borrow a quote from Dr. George Hahn, Professor of British Literature Studies at Towson University, “And the book's final work is in a garden—where Candide now keeps his feet on the ground, unlike Pangloss, whose head is in the clouds. Thus, Voltaire affirms reason over rationalization.”