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A Serious Comedy:
“Candide,” written by
Francois-Marie Arouet De Voltaire, featured a character who was
subjected to a wide variety of cruelties and horrors.
It was a philosophical narrative and a political
statement. The
violence that Voltaire vividly illustrated was both serious and
significant in the historical aspect, but the result was so
startling that it induced laughter to offer some protection from
reality. (Norton
Anthology, p. 316) “At
the court-martial they asked which he preferred, to be flogged
thirty-six times by the entire regiment or to receive summarily
a dozen bullets in the brain. (Voltaire, p. 321)”
The backdrop to
“Candide” was elements incorporated from Voltaire’s own
life. The
character, Candide, lived with the Baron of Thunder in an
aristocratic family. Pangloss
was the oracle at the castle who taught “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology.”
Throughout Candide’s journey, Pangloss’s teachings
crop up to question his own philosophies. “It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than
they are, for since everything is made to serve an end,
everything necessarily serves the best end.
(Voltaire, p. 319)” Miss Cunégonde was the daughter of
the German baron, who fell in love with Candide.
He was quickly exiled from the castle when he discovered
this relationship. “Candide, ejected from the earthly paradise, wandered for a
long time without knowing where he was going, weeping, raising
his eyes to heaven, and gazing back frequently on the most
beautiful of castles which contained the most beautiful of
Baron’s daughters. (Voltaire, p. 320)” |
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The elements of the play resembled many actual events in
Voltaire’s real life. In
both instances, the book and his real life, he rebelled against
the special privileges bestowed upon the select few, namely the
noble and possibly clergymen.
He boasted that there was no difference in rank, such as
the gap between the common and noble people.
In fact, Voltaire spent several years in imprisonment due
to his satirical attacks on the aristocratic government and
officials.
The subject of death and evil were brought into the story
through the characters of “Candide.”
Some people viewed the forces of good as an absence of
evil, while others believed that evil exists to emphasize the
good. “God gave
them neither twenty-four-pound cannon nor bayonets, yet they
have manufactured both in order to destroy themselves.
(Voltaire, p. 324)”
Jacque, who was referred to as the Anabaptist, could have
symbolically fit this description of the self destructive nature
of humans. Pangloss
reasoned that the tempest, or storm, that killed Jacque was a
direct sign of the divine will. |
