75 pages • 2 hours read
VoltaireCandide
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1759A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Companions and Philosophical Debate
Candide is punctuated by the returning motif of the travel companion, who is at times lost and then found again. These travel companions are often foils to Candide’s optimism, allowing Voltaire to satirize the protagonists’ guiding philosophy. On one hand, their personal stories challenge Candide’s worldview that all is for the best, as the reader watches how Candide reacts when confronted with information that contradicts his point of view. At the same time, these companions allow Candide to debate these truths and experience various realities as cultural translators, guiding him through new cities and continents. Like a parody of the Platonic dialogues or the philosophical discussions often employed by 18th-century philosophers, such as George Berkeley, Voltaire allows Candide to come to his “truths” through constant discourse with his travel companions.
The recurring motif of the companion, lost and found, also allows Voltaire to show whether Candide’s views have evolved. How does he confront the fact that Brother Girofleo and Paquette are in fact more miserable since his first encounter with them in Venice? How will Candide handle the aging of Cunégonde after idealizing her beauty for months? With each supposed “death” of the companion (Pangloss, Cunégonde, the Baron, Paquette, etc.), a new version of that person is born, one whose suffering has grounded them further in reality.
The Voyage
Candide embarks on a literal voyage when he is ejected from the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh, which takes him from Germany to Holland and Portugal, across the Atlantic Ocean, up through the South American continent, and back to Europe to traverse France, England, and Venice, before landing in Constantinople. The literal voyage gives him the opportunity to encounter various known and unknown cultures, various sects of the Christian church, and high and low society, through which Voltaire can satirize the contemporary social and religious hypocrisy of his time. With such a broad and diverse set of encounters, Voltaire’s critique takes much into account in debunking optimism as a viable philosophy.
Candide’s physical travels correspond as well to a “spiritual” or personal voyage of discovery, as he leaves behind his childhood education in the shelter of the castle and is thrust into the real world. Education, and lack thereof, figures prominently in the text, and the knowledge he acquires while circulating in the world gives him concrete, lived experience that counters the abstract theories he learned with his teacher Pangloss. Through literal travel, Candide can grow in his experience, as he matures past his initial boyhood idealism. His personal growth is heavily influenced by his companions and interlocutors along the way, whose personal experiences often contradict the fundamental positions of optimism. By the end of his travels, Candide has abandoned much of his boyhood idealism; the journey has taught him to accept his responsibility as a husband and a member of his community, along with the necessity of cultivating his garden.
Garden of Eden
The motif of the Garden of Eden, or paradise, bookends Candide’s adventures in the world. In the second chapter, Voltaire describes Candide’s childhood home as his “earthly paradise” (5) from which he is cast out like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Candide’s voyage is in part motivated by a desire to reclaim that initial happiness, in particular with Cunégonde, but to also return to a world where he can continue to believe the childlike theory of optimism, where all is for the best. Candide’s travels in the world take him farther and farther from that garden, both literally and figuratively.
For a time, Candide and Cacambo both rediscover a sort of paradise in Eldorado, a perfect utopia hidden away in the mountains of South America. While they acknowledge the perfection of this hidden paradise, for Candide, the happiness in incomplete without obtaining the object of his love, Cunégonde. For Candide, paradise has become an interior state rather than a physical place.
Candide and all his companions are in search of happiness in their lives, looking for that return to Eden. However, in Voltaire’s satire, that return is impossible, based on an ideal world that no longer exists after the original sin. Like their biblical precedents, Candide and Cunégonde are initially punished and exiled for their curiosity, their desire to know more. When he is finally reunited with a changed Cunégonde, he begins to accept that their paradise must be something new and grounded in reality. Thus, to reclaim this paradise at the end of the text, Candide must first reject philosophical inquiry, to a degree, in favor of cultivating his new garden on his farm outside of Constantinople. Only in doing, rather than knowing, can Candide and his companions find contentment. By cultivating their own garden, they can create their own earthly paradise, which, as Martin cynically observes, is “the only way to make life bearable” (93). Not quite paradise, but perhaps in Voltaire’s world, the best one can hope for.
