Work!

   What are humans for? Why are we in this world? Some might say to enjoy ourselves and live life as it were the last day and all that nonsense. I don't really believe in all this. My answer is: to work. And to work hard. Without any work, your life would be nonexistent. In fact, the human race would be long gone if they hadn't done any efforts. 


After reading the first paragraph, many of you will think I'm not thinking right. But stop and reflect on this thought. How did the world we know today come to be? How did all these things appear? The answer is from restless hours of hard work. The first humans to ever live on Earth, or at least the creatures at the bottom of the evolutionary chain we are in, didn't lie around and scratch their heads until food or shelter dropped from the sky. They went out and with a big effort, they got all of this in order to survive. We do the same today. We work hard for what we want and hopefully most of us don't rest until we get it. We are taught to do this since we are children, and the ones who don't do this are called spoiled and are not very well accepted into society.


   This topic is shown in Candide when Candide and Martin reach Count Pococurante's palace in Venice. Voltaire describes his palace as a very elegant, rich and majestic place to live, a palace where everyone only wishes to live at in their wildest dreams. But the Count sees it as dull and uneventful. Even though he owns some of the most expensive things in the world, he is not even satisfied with it. He describes the Rafael masterpieces he owns:

The color is altogether dull, and there is not enough modeling in the figures, which do not stand out sufficiently. (119)

   This man is an example of many things that Voltaire thinks that are wrong in this world, like materialistic happiness, aristocratic domination, etc. But I relate this with work. The Count most likely never worked for the money with which he paid for all of this. Therefore, he never really enjoys it. This is why work is so important for the human spirit. It gives men motivation and  pride to show that they are competent and are able to accomplish great things. I believe that this feature is deeply embedded in the human brain, and is one of the main reason besides necessity that we are what we are right now, a civilization so advanced and technological.

From Good or Evil?

As Martin and Candide discuss the benevolence of humans on their journey towards Bordeaux, it has made me wonder if humans are actually well intended. Martin says that humans come from "the forces of evil" (92), as he has not seen a place where humans don't commit horrible acts. Candide opposes him because he still believes there is goodness in the human spirit. 


This issue has been discussed many times and there is no concrete answer to it. As Martin puts it, 

I have scarcely seen a town which does not seek the ruin of a neighboring town, nor a family that does not wish to exterminate some other family. You will find that the weak always detest the strong and cringe before them, and that the strong treat them like so many a sheep to be sold for their meat and wool. (92)

Through Martin, Voltaire expresses his views on the society of his time. They are a little pessimistic, but entirely true. This quote is perhaps the most important quote in Candide up to where I have read. It questions our whole existence as a human race and explains why our world is like it is right now. 


Candide, in this case, is on the other side of the discussion. He still believes that people still have some good inside them. After all the evil he's been through, like the Dutch sailor scamming him or the hanging of Dr. Pangloss, and the horrible stories he's heard, like the old woman's story or the slaves' story in Surinam, he still thinks that humans are good creatures.


Personally, I believe that humans have both good and bad inside them. The issue is learning how to use them wisely. Bad acts are a lot easier to do than good ones, and that is one of the reasons why our world is so full of crap. 

Where to Find Happiness

A question every human being must wonder about. Happiness expresses itself through many ways, and Voltaire makes it a recurring theme in Candide. Every character has his own definition of happiness. 

  For Dr. Pangloss, almost everything was full of joy, everything from teaching the Baron's children in the "best of all possible mansions" the wonders of education to lying on the streets of Amsterdam with an STD. His optimistic views made this possible, since he saw only the good things in life and thought they happened for the best. 


Finding happiness for Candide was a whole lot different. For a very naïve guy, he had his definition of being happy very clear in his mind. When he is in ElDorado, he says that even though "... the house where I was born won't bear comparisons with the mansions of this country; but still, I shall never be happy without Lady Cunegonde..."(82). Candide's way of being content was very different from Pangloss' ways. He could only be at peace if he was with his childhood love, Lady Cunegonde, even though he was surrounded by all the riches he could ever imagine.


Is happiness really being in love with a person? Can it be found without the love of anyone? Or can you find happiness everywhere you go just by seeing the positive side of everything? Certainly, there are a  lot of other views on happiness, but these two are the ones that can be easily identified in Candide. As of my views, I agree with this quote:

"There is only one success - to spend your life in your own way." 

The New and Better World

In this part of the book, the old woman is telling her story on the ship towards the New World. First, she tells that she is the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina. This is a direct critique to the Catholic institution, since popes nor any religious official aren't allowed to marry nor have children. Also, the marriage with a nobility of Palestrina is shocking, since both areas of the world (Catholic Europe and Middle East) don't get along very well at this time because of the Crusades in the previous centuries. 

When the old lady's tragic story ends, she begins to doubt why she didn't kill herself after the horrible events in her life and why don't many other people do, since they also live such miserable lives. This is another clear defiance to Christianity, since suicide is forbidden in this religion and punished by spending eternity in hell. It also gives a shocking revelation to human life we had never thought of. Humans always want to know what is going to happen next, always want to grow and improve. Voltaire states, through the old lady, that humans love life and wish to enjoy it to the last straw. That is the true spirit of human nature, and quitting on life would be against it. That is why the old lady nor Lady Cunegonde quit on their tragic journey after being, almost literally, on top of the world. At some point, the only direction they could go was up, and they hoped for it so much they never quit on their sad life. 


Candide and his troops, along with Lady Cunegonde and the old woman, finally arrived to the New World, the one Candide said was: "the one where all goes well; for I must admit that regrettable things happen in this world of ours, moral and physical acts that one cannot approve of." He finally admitted that their world was not the best of all possible ones and that he didn't agree with Pangloss anymore; before, he had followed and agreed to his teachings like a blind man. 

The New World was a promise of a better world

An amusing part in the story (for me) was when Candide arrives to Buenos Ayres and meets the Governor of the town. He presents himself as Fernando D'Ibaraa y Figueroa y Mascarenes y Lampourdos y Souza. This is a critique towards Latin American royalty at that time, because he describes him as being so arrogant and "on a pedestal" that everyone who met him wished to hit him. It is also amusing because he is from Argentina, and even now a days Argentinians have this reputation for being arrogant and with a huge ego. 


As far as I have read, the New World has been very grateful to their new visitors. It has given Lady Cunegonde a wealthy, aristocratic husband, the old woman a place to relieve herself of her past, and Candide a reencounter with an old friend from Westphalia. It is interestingly coincidental the fact that Candide has encountered so many people from his past life in the Baron's home. Who will he encounter next?

Irony in its Purest Form

This novel just keeps getting better and better. I have noticed that the irony in Candide is just top quality, and Voltaire makes us discover the irony in scenes we had heard of before but never related it to ironic situations. For example, it's ironic that a University, a place where knowledge and wisdom is supposed to be taught to make humanity prosper, suggests ceremonial human sacrifices as a superstitious act to prevent a second earthquake from happening. I won't go in to explain how absurd and anti humanistic these acts were, it is just a waste of time. Instead, I am going to compare this scene with a movie I saw a while back.

Wanted, with Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman

Wanted is about a clan of assassins who, by reading the patterns in the fabrics created by their sacred weaving machine, pick out names of random people for them to kill. Their justification is that by killing the innocent people whose names come out, they can prevent these people from killing thousands more. They really don't know much about the people they kill, some may have never even said a lie in their whole lives, but they still go ahead and kill them to prevent the future suffering they might cause. 

When I saw this movie, I didn't connect it to irony or superstition, but I know see a connection with the University's absurd suggestion. Both institutions claim that with just a little suffering from innocent people (the University used Jews who refused to eat pork, a Basque who was accused of marrying his godmother, and Candide and Pangloss for speaking), a bigger portion of people might be saved from bad situations. Voltaire is a genius in the way he holds up a mirror to society and makes them realize that what should be a respectable and wise institution like a University suggests such a horrible thing just because of a superstition, and also blames society and the common people for following along to these terrible acts just because a higher authority says so.

What happens next is astonishing. Under the University of Coimbra's supervision, Dr. Pangloss was hanged in order to prevent a second earthquake. Death has been a recurring theme so far in the novel, and Dr. Pangloss always explains every death has "sufficient reason" to happen. For a man who believes so much in sufficient reason and all that nonsense, is it ironic that his death didn't have sufficient reason for it to happen? I shouldn't make fun of a man's death, but his was very particular. He always claimed every death was meant to be since the beginning, and that the sufficient reason was provided by the environment it happened in. His death, however, was caused by him ranting about illogical things, and there wasn't sufficient reason for him to be hanged, since it was just a superstitious act. I guess he abandoned his belief of the best of worlds right before he was unjustly hanged in this cruel and unforgiving world. It was like if an animal rights' defender was trampled to death by a cow. 

Constructive Criticism?

François-Marie Arouet better known by the pen name Voltaire (Yes, François-Marie is a man's name!)

   The novel Candide by Voltaire is a satirical criticism of European society in Voltaire's age. As I read the first few pages, I noticed it contains all of the four elements of satire: hyperbole, irony, absurdity and target. The novel is full of it, and its tone makes anyone doubt whether he is talking seriously or sarcastically. At every point of the book, you have to stop and think: Was that a true fact or a clever joke? Voltaire used these strategies to criticize the errors he saw in society. 

   For me, the element that I can most recognize in the novel is irony. He uses irony to criticize Dr. Pangloss' ideas. The narrative takes such unexpected and ironical turns that they are hard to believe. For example: How can such an "educated" and correct man like Dr. Pangloss, teaching to the most influential family of Westphalia, end up with an STD from the West Indies and sleeping in Holland's streets? Not only this, but the grandest irony of them all is that this happened in what he explained as "the best of all possible worlds". 

  After some research, I learned that this view of the world is called Leibnizian Optimism, which consists of believing that all is for the best because God is a benevolent deity. This view was taught by Dr. Pangloss to the Thunder-ven-tronckh children as their tutor. As said before, it is just simply ironic that a man who firmly believed in this would end up so bad off in the "best of all worlds".

   Another criticism I enjoyed was the part about war. He starts by implying that war is more about displaying one's power rather than using it. He says:

Those who have never seen two well-trained armies drawn up for battle, can have no idea of the beauty and the brilliance of the display. Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony as Hell itself could not rival. (page 25)

   In this scene, Voltaire makes both armies look like just marching bands instead of brutal armies. Voltaire takes out the seriousness of battle and mocks them by stating this. He then goes on to say that all the casualties of the Bulgar-Abar war were just the result of a "heroic butchery" (page 25), and sarcastically says that the war liberated the world from nine or ten thousand villains. One can clearly see Voltaire's views on war. He thinks it is a dumb tradition with no clear or effective results, because he later says that after all the killing, both Kings were celebrating. 
   He later describes with brutal detail the image of Candide going through some burned down villages which were results of the war. Afterwards, Pangloss tells Candide that the Baron's country seat was burned down, but that everything was all right because it was avenged by burning another town. This gives us an idea of what Voltaire portrays about war. He hints that it is the pure degradation of the human spirit.