El Blog de Twanda

In class, Dr. Sol mentioned that Candide’s adventures were his journey of maturity.  This maturation ties in with the Enlightenment emphasis on questioning everything and reasoning out what is true through observation.  At the beginning of the book, Candide believes all that he has been taught by Pangloss-namely that this is the best of all possible worlds.  It is only when Candide is exiled from the Baron’s castle that he begins to experience the real world and to make observations about what the world is really like.  He hangs on to what he has been taught even while seeing the evil that men do to each other in battle, but when he is whipped and sees Pangloss hanged, he begins to doubt, saying, “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?” In his travels he hears the stories of others who have suffered more than he has and he witnesses the mistreatment of man toward man. In Surinam Candide despairs of trusting in Pangloss’ teachings, maintaining that it is the, “madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”   As he continues on his journey, Candide vacilates between embracing and discarding the optimism that he had learned from Pangloss.  When he is hopefull of reuniting with Cunegonde, he remarks that “all goes as well as possible,” but reverses his position when she is not in Venice, saying,” all is misery and illusion.”  When he reunites with Cunegonde, however, he is not happy.  Even Pangloss does not believe his own tenets, though he continues to champion them. 

Candide finds an answer to his question of happiness in life by observing the farmer who is content by cultivating his garden with his family.  Candide’s newfound belief is not something that he has been taught naively embraces, but a belif that he has arrived at through experience ad observation.  The answers to life’s big questions may not be answerable,  but one can find happiness through contributing to his society of friends and family by working together with them to accomplish a goal.   This combination of experience and seeking one’s own answers in life is a process which we all go through as we mature.  Our parents teach us what they believe is true, but to grow up, we must examine their beliefs to see if they are valid for our lives.  Sometimes this process results in embracing the very things our parents taught us, and sometimes we reject what they believe, as did Candide.  In either outcome, we end up with our own beliefs about life instead of borrowed beliefs that are unexamined.