Candide - The Original Survival Reality Show
In Voltaire's Candide, many of the characters share the uncanny ability to go through difficult situations and survive. Some of them are even killed, only to return in the next chapter healthier than ever. In many cases, they narrowly escape death due to the help of a friend who bails them out and asks for nothing in return. After so many close calls, one can't help but speculate if a higher power is in control of their fates, or possibly their survival is solely due to luck.
In the first chapter, Candide is caught kissing Cunegonde by her father, the Baron, who banishes him from the castle. He walks to an inn where he is recruited into the Bulgarian army by two large soldiers who lead him to the camp where his "training" begins. His training consists of regular beatings, so Candide decides to leave the army. He is later caught and given the choice between execution and being beaten 36 times by each of the army's 2,000 soldiers. He chooses the beating. After 4,000 blows he is missing nearly all of the skin on his back, and asks to be shot instead. He is pardoned by the King of the Bulgars, who sends him to a surgeon to get healed for the upcoming battle. "A worthy surgeon healed Candide in three weeks with the emollients prescribed by Dioscorides. He already had a little skin, and was able to walk, when the King of the Bulgars joined battle with the King of the Avars." Candide hides while about 30,000 people die in the catastrophic battle. He later meets up with Pangloss, who has barely survived an attack on the castle in which Cunegonde's parents were murdered and she was disemboweled after being raped repeatedly. When Pangloss and Candide are on a ship en route to Lisbon on a business trip with a man named Jacques, a storm strikes and sinks the ship. Candide and Pangloss float to shore on a plank and are the only survivors besides an unnamed sailor. While they are in Lisbon, an earthquake strikes and the city is burned. Several thousand people perish and yet Pangloss and Candide somehow live through it. In a desperate attempt to prevent future natural disasters, the leaders of Lisbon decide to hold an auto-da-fé. Pangloss is hanged, and after Candide survives his flogging he meets an old woman who brings him to Cunegonde. Somehow she has survived being disemboweled and repeatedly raped by several men. Candide and his servant Cacambo are taken hostage by the Oreillons, a native tribe. They narrowly escape being eaten by the cannibals because Cacambo is able to convince them that they are their friends because they have killed Jesuits.
Candide, Pangloss and Cunegonde are the characters who are put through the most difficult situations and are able to survive. Blind optimism and resignation are the root of their incredible survivalist instincts. By the end of the novel the five main characters who have survived have resigned themselves to a life of mindless work without consideration to their place in the world. They have gotten through horrendous situations more through naïve faith and luck rather than their wits or any logical reflection of their lives. Whenever any of them has gone through a difficult time, they resort to numb apathy and escapism in order to deal with it and come out on the other side somewhat intact. This pattern is a metaphor for the larger picture Voltaire aims to satirize, specifically the optimistic philosophers of his time.
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