Candide

What a horrific story! All of the central characters, and many others, suffer the most brutal cruelties from the first page, with only brief pauses to set up the next horror. While I do enjoy a good satire, this story made me want to quit reading.
The story might have been more enjoyable to read if the storyline were more nuanced, but the point is fully evident within the first ten pages and, in stringing it out, Voltaire merely inflicts the pain on his readers as well as his characters. Piling one misery on top of another makes Voltaire’s view of the nature of the world inescapable and affirms that there is neither reason nor consolation in philosophy. The only chance of wisdom and security seems to lie in staying home and show more cultivating one’s garden, although even this is far from secure.
Who would want to read a story of endless varieties of torture and misery if they did not lead to some outcome? This is like watching a horror movie with no resolution (and I’m not one who chooses to watch horror movies anyway). The satire might be justified if it took on a worthy target, but this storyline is not the true nature of the world. The philosophers Voltaire describes are thoughtless idiots, a false caricature that is not worth satirizing. And nor is Voltaire’s picture of the world any more realistic. While there is pain and misery in life for no purpose, most of us lead a good part of our lives in general comfort and even well-being. Even acknowledging the relative privilege I enjoy as a middle-class Canadian, I don’t think the people living in poverty or in underdeveloped countries or countries at war live lives of unrelenting pain. show less

A very charming little satire about a cheerful young boy raised in luxury and educated by a philosopher who espoused optimism. He taught young Candide that he lived in the best possible world and that all that occurs in life is for the best. Thereafter, Candide and his family are beset by a series of horrific tragedies, tortures, and unfortunate circumstances. Although such things would alarm and upset a normal man, Candide is confident that all these disasters are evidence that the world is operating as it should be.

Although he often believes his teacher to have been killed, he usually turns up later to impart more wisdom and sermons about the perfect nature of the world. It is a silly story that made me smile, chuckle, and often laugh show more aloud. This sort of dark humor is just exactly my cup of tea. I didn't want it to end. show less

Candide was an unexpected treat; one of those books that, if I did not know otherwise, I could say was written just for me. It was so deliciously dark and cynical, like if Charles Bukowski and Terry Pratchett had a baby, with Mark Twain as the midwife. But, of course, it pre-dates all of those writers; I found it astonishing just how fresh this 250-year-old topical satire proved to be. It is remarkably modern and, yes, candid in its views: religion, society, philosophy, slavery, hypocrisy, and so on, all get both barrels, with Voltaire always eagerly reloading after doing so. I was also (pleasantly) shocked at just how unreserved and lacking in prudishness Voltaire was when discussing sex – particularly as the book was written in the show more 18th century – but then, perhaps I shouldn't have been: he was a Frenchman after all.

The most unsolicited of my delights from Candide came from the fact that it was also a good adventure story, taking Candide and his band of misfits on a globe-trotting bildungsroman quest around the world: a romping antecedent to the likes of Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Pratchett's Discworld novels. Candide even stumbles across the mythical city of El Dorado, where gold and precious stones are so plentiful they lie in the streets, and whose inhabitants are bemused by their visitors' lust for their 'pebbles' and 'yellow dust'. That Voltaire managed to provide such diverse and satisfying delights in such a short novel (about 140 pages) is to be marvelled at; Candide is one of those rare 'classics' that defies the aura of stuffiness that the genre often suggests.

Despite being a philosophical satire, I was also pleased at how jargon-free Candide remained. This is a short novel the very epitome of brevity: a thoroughly delightful romp that breezes by in no time. The philosophical angle is easy enough to understand even for a layman and it is never boring, for Voltaire is deftly exposing the weaknesses of philosophical theories by pointing out their absurdities, not by critiquing them. Witness the following, after the character Candide is press-ganged into the army, exposing the limits of 'free will' in a world where cruelty and oppression is ever-present:

The bewildered Candide was still rather in the dark about his heroism. One fine spring morning he took it into his head to decamp and walked straight off, thinking it a privilege common to man and beast to use his legs when he wanted. But he had not gone six miles before he was caught, bound, and thrown into a dungeon by four other six-foot heroes. At the court martial he was graciously permitted to choose between being flogged thirty-six times by the whole regiment or having twelve bullets in his brain. It was useless to declare his belief in Free Will and say he wanted neither; he had to make his choice." (pg. 24).

(As a side note, one could easily replace the name 'Candide' with 'Huck Finn' or 'Rincewind' there.) The main thrust of Voltaire's book is not an advocacy of any certain philosophy; rather, it is to try and stop people becoming complacent. Voltaire is satirising the argument that ours is the best of all possible worlds; the argument which claims that when bad things happen they still contribute to the greater good or to the divine plan. Many will note that this is still a view prevalent amongst some woolly-minded folk nowadays. (Candide delivers a revealing definition of optimism on page 86 – "The passion for maintaining that all is right when all goes wrong with us." – which would be worthy of addition to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary.) Voltaire correctly recognises that this allows people to become complacent; it allows them not to try and make the world better themselves because what is happening, good or bad, is 'part of the plan'. But, as Candide realises at the end of his adventure, "we must go and work in the garden." It will only grow if we work at it; if we pull out the weeds and cultivate the flowers and crops. That's a message we all need reminding of from time to time, and I guarantee you'll never have as much fun learning it as you will here." show less

One of the many classics I am currently re-reading, 'Candide' still entertains me. I would credit its continued relevance as a satire on society and the human condition even though the vast majority of its contemporary references are now forgotten except by specialists and scholars. What touches the modern reader is the humour, the broad but hilariously irreverent characterisation (it had not struck me before how like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are Candide and Cacambo), the sharpness of the satire, and the questioning philosophy. I would argue there are few more powerful books on the hold our acquisitive natures have on us and the futility of our greed, or on the merits of finding our personal gardens to cultivate.

Candide by Voltaire is a humorous satire featuring the ultimate optimist experiencing life from so many different angles that this optimism is sorely tested. First published in 1759, the main character is Candide and he and his various companions travel around the world from Europe to South America and eventually settle on a small farm outside of Constantinople. They experience amazing adventures and dangers and Candide’s personal motto of “everything in the world is for the best”, taught to him by his beloved mentor, becomes questionable by characters and readers alike.

Voltaire’s style is often called absurd satire due to both the humor and the exaggeration that he inserts into the story. There has been so much written about show more this literary masterpiece that I won’t even begin to try to explain or analyze it in my meagre words, but, I can say that I was both surprised and delighted with this book. I read this in the form of installations and I looked forward to receiving a new section and learning what would happen next. The author missed no opportunity to skewer the religion, politics, morals and lifestyles of his time, and he put his characters into the most outrageous and outlandish situations that you really never knew what could possibly happen next.

Candide is entirely accessible and highly readable. Voltaire gives his readers the gift of laughter, both at life in general and the people it contains. This “road-trip” book is short, entertaining and downright brilliant. show less

Candide by Voltaire is a laugh out loud funny book, if you're in the right frame of mind. I read sections of it aloud to CJ and both of us ended up in hysterics. (Be warned, its comedy is often quite dark and unlikely to pass anyone's sensitivity test.) It was written in 1759 and it is clearly a product of its time; but it also still has much to say to us about the current state of the world, unfortunately.

The story concerns an idealistic, handsome young man, Candide, who finds his optimism repeatedly tested by the treacherous people he meets and the violent world he inhabits. As a youth, Candide, the son of a wealthy Baron, is tutored by Dr. Pangloss, a German philosopher, who's world view is summed up in the opening chapter, "It is show more demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise: for, since everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose...Therefore, those who have maintained that all is well have been talking nonsense: they should have maintained that all is for the best."

Candide clings to Dr. Pangloss' philosoply after Dr. Pangloss is hung and burned at the stake, even after he is driven from his home, separated from his beloved Cunegonde and forced into an unforgiving, hostile world. Candide travels the world looking for Cunegonde and for a place free from suffering. He is at times imprisoned, enslaved, starved, tortured, kidnapped, marooned, etc. etc., but all the while, he believes that all is for the best.

The result is a kind of Series of Unfortunate Events for adults. The situations become so comically awful that the reader cannot help but laugh at them and at Candide's reaction. At one point, towards the end of the book, Candide encounters six former kings attending the carnival in Venice. Each king tells his story, all of them stories of how they lost their thrones. Each king's story tries to top the injustice endured by the previous teller with very humorous results. Everyone Candide meets has a tale of woe to tell, yet no one can make a dent in Candide's optimism.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Candide. I expected it to be heavy going, never having read Voltaire before. Instead I found a quickly paced adventure with witty dialogue and satire that I actually found humorous. Candide benefits from the novella form. Had this been a full length novel it would have undoubtedly become tedious. Brevity is the source of wit after all. (I think that's right, anyway.)

So, I'm giving Candide by Voltaire five out of five stars. I may end up putting it on my best of the year list this year. show less

As one of those 'must reads' I was more surprised than anything at how concise and pleasantly acidic the story of Candide was. Everything is told in a brisk and satisfying fashion as philosophical ideas are bandied about in a wonderful point/counterpoint fashion. Though Voltaire's less than admirable traits definitely seep up off the text (his rabid anti-semitism, his racism, his noxious sense of white male secular european Christian exceptionalism) all of these factors, remarkably, do little to mar the overall value of the story.

Candide travels through the world, and god help me I get to use the term picaresque, he witnesses, experiences, and deals out more than his fair share of horrible tragedy. But Voltaire's dexterous use of true show more satirical wit, laughing in the face of horrible atrocity by understating by simply telling it like it is, really made me imagine how fun it would have been to see Voltaire and Swift trade barbs over a few pints.

And given the brevity of the text the characters are incredibly distinct. True, they're all 'types' (cultured intellectual, the various religious movements popular in Voltaire's day and such) endemic to most satire, they still hold their own as singular voices set against naive Candide and the repeated voice of his mentor Pangloss and his this is the 'best of all worlds' philosophy which is thoroughly torn apart over the course of the story, even more so when said proponent of the philosophy experiences horrors akin to the worst imaginable and still posits his philosophy. Philosophical constancy or consistently constant delusion masked as such? Hell, I'm a cynic, I know my answer.

But Candide's answer at the very end of the text is what thrills me the most. His 'we must cultivate our garden' is wonderful in that it doesn't discount all the philosophies that have been espoused before it (from Pangloss' optimism to Martin's pessimism and all points between and beyond) but it does seem to state that all beliefs rooted in absolutism, that don't take into the drudgery and all too human day to day of most people's waking lives, are doomed to, if not fail, than at least be incredibly far from satisfactory because they root themselves so defiantly against reality and its multifarious nature by being too rigidly narrow. I don't pretend to know what Voltaire is espousing and what Candide favors, I think it would be too easy to say that constant work and maintenance is the answer as stated by the turkish man and his family near the end of the story (why would the characters continue to debate had they found the truth and solution?). Candide's ambiguity, the use of the word 'cultivate' as opposed to 'work' shows, to me at least, the potential inherent in our hands and in our world, but the, some might say, herculean fucking effort, required of this undertaking can serve as a solution in itself, though insufficient as it's only a means, not an end. I'm reminded of Camus but Voltaire doesn't seem to be saying it's pointless and try because, but he does seem to be saying that possibilities are only created from effort and strain, and are never promised, but are better than idle contemplation and building castles in the air.

All things taken together Voltaire has it's downsides, hence the good but not great score I'm giving it. It's too short, the pace can be a bit too brisk at times (but usually isn't) and there are more than a few moments where the story feels more pamphlet or treatise-like than a self contained work of literature. But what's good is excellent here. The wit and the humor are excellent partners with the philosophical fencing, making for a quick and effective piece of work that makes me more than curious about Voltaire's further oeuvre. show less