Candide

Last year I took a course on European history from the 16th-20th century and the professor who taught it, Neven Leddy, spent most of his researching time on the Enlightenment. So I thought hey, let's read a novel by someone during that era. Immediately I thought of Voltaire, I mean he was exiled so he should have something interesting to say, right? I won't lie, the cover of Voltaire's' Candide probably would have made me buy it anyway cause the book is essentially summed up in a comic on it, how cool is that? A comical tale of a young man's journey into manhood with nothing but the hope that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Written shortly after the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and using the natural disasters of that All Saints' Day as well as other violent occurrences such as the Seven Years War and the Spanish Inquisition he is able to entertain us with the travels of a young naive man, Candide. Taught by a professor, Pangloss, who believes "that things cannot be other than as they are: for, since everything is made to serve an end, everything is necessarily for the best ... in the best of all possible worlds" Candide carries this philosophy with him wherever he goes and finds himself often in quite a few rough spots. Much of his time is often consumed with trying to convince people of Pangloss's philosophy, many of these people believe quite the opposite that all men are miserable. Although, with the romantic thought of finding his true love Cunégonde and spending the rest of his life with her, Candide just kept trudging along.

Candide explores much of the world including a tour of South America with a stop in El Dorado the lost city of gold, where his fortunes greatly improve, and most of western Europe. Oddly enough, quite a few times along the way when people are thought to be dead they reappear very much alive ready to antagonize or philosophize with Candide. After many ridiculous forays and follies Candide is finally resigned to the fact that he must "set to work and stop proving things". Voltaire essentially pokes fun at philosophers in general, when in the end his character comes to abandon all things to do with philosophy and finds happiness in cultivating his garden much like when man was placed in Eden. Essentially discrediting all who spend their time talking about things rather than doing things.