After our last class session, I’ve come to the conclusion that Voltaire wrote Candide, Or Optimism as a sharp critique of society. I feel like he was really taking shots at people who don’t have the courage to be more open minded; people who would rather let their religion do all the thinking for them. Because of that, I believe he adds “optimism” to the title because it reinforces his idea that blind faith is worse than no faith at all. You can really see this idea in the first part of Candide, when he is kicked out of the Baron’s castle and the unfortunate events that occur to him afterwards. From his “STRANGER DANGER!” scene to Cunegonde’s #resurrection, Candide’s optimism never falters (he can thank his philosophy master Pangloss for that). What really drives the point home is the fact that the only characters who get resurrected in this story are the ones who have caused Candide the most grief: Pangloss gave him a flawed view of the world with his blind optimism; the Baron represents the absurdity tradition poses by being someone who still believes in the rules of the class system (and lineage rights). Lastly, the relationship he had with Cunegonde represents the shallow traits every human shares and the fickle tendencies of “love.” It took three important people to die and be revived for Candide to realize that the world isn’t as great as he thought it as. But why should we care about what happens to Candide?

Ultimately, what makes Candide such a huge success is it’s universality  it’s ability to be understood by the masses (and not just the philosophy snobs). Candide is Voltaire’s representation of the human race. Candide is easily swayed; he reflects all of the ideas his the people around him represent. He’s optimistic to a fault and he’s shallow. The worst part is that things never get better for Candide. He still ends up with his girl (even though he didn’t really want her anymore) and “lives happily ever after.” What kind of message is a depressing ending like that supposed to send? Maybe he’s trying to say that people should rather depend on themselves than speculate over the actions of an omnipotent being. Maybe he wanted people to realize that a big part of life is it’s harshness? Or maybe he was just bored and he needed to spice his life up by taking shots at everybody? Whatever motivated him must have been real important if it caused him to right a whole story about it and consequently caused me to write about that.