Candide also reveals Voltaire's views on slavery. In Chapter 19, Candide meets a slave on the road. The man is missing both a hand and a leg; his master had cut them off. The slave tells Candide about his horrible living and working conditions, and mentions how all mankind is related, no matter what skin tone. Candide is deeply affected by what he sees and cries. He even renounces Pangloss's ideas about optimism. This scene clearly shows that Voltaire was against slavery.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Voltaire's Candide
Voltaire's Candide, being a satire, comments and pokes fun at society. One of the things I found most interesting was how revolutionary his views were. We discussed how the book gives evidence to Voltaire being a feminist. All of the female characters (the Old Woman, Cunegonde, Paquette) undergo terrible treatment. They raped, treated like property, shared between two men... Voltaire seems to sympathize with the women and promote equality between the sexes. In the play, Dr. Pangloss is seen educating both young men and women in the same classroom.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, the whole point of renouncing Pangloss's ideas about optimism is because Voltaire was in fact criticizing the Enlightenment. He realized that there were limits to reason, similar to how Rousseau felt. In "Candide", Dr. Pangloss represented the Cartesian thinker Leibnitz. He believed that "this world was the best of all possible worlds." It is obvious that Voltaire did not feel this way because of how he portrayed the world - dark and desolate. Its interesting to note that Voltaire does incorporate his own ideas into his works; something that most philosophes did not do. Towards the end of the story, Voltaire gives a vision of what could be in his utopian vision of "El Dorado".
ReplyDelete