Candide's Metamorphosis
In Voltaire's novella, we view the main character, Candide, as being sophomoric and rather naïve. Yet, Candide eventually frees himself from the shackles that burden his beloved philosopher Pangloss and other characters befriended along the way. Candide's journey back to Cunegonde become a means for him to emerge from his "self-imposed immaturity."
The word "candide," which Cassell's French Dictionary defines as "ingenuous", would greatly summarize who the main character is to be perceived as. He will shape his own opinions throughout the story to parallel anybody else's that would seem to please him. His faith is put in a number of people who he meets along his travels, as he tries to find his way back to Cunegonde. He sees things as others would instruct him to see them. And though it can be contested that he is still the same at the end of the book, I will argue that he becomes the most emancipated from his own chains of "self-imposed immaturity" than any of his friends and comrades.
The book first starts off with Candide hanging on to every idea put before him by Pangloss. He is held captive by some of the most bizarre forms of reasoning composed by Professor Pangloss. In Chapter 1, Pangloss professes that "our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles," and that "since pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all the year round." This rationalization is totally bizarre and could not be applied to any reasonable mode of thought (especially the latter, which would be quickly dismissed by Vegans, Vegetarians, Muslims, and Jews!). After Candide is eventually banished from the house of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, he is taken in by James (the Anabaptist). After discovering Pangloss in a wretched state, eventually Candide, James, and Pangloss set off to Lisbon. As James drowns, Pangloss stops Candide from saving the Anabaptist by saying that the "Lisbon harbour was made on purpose for this Anabaptist to drown here." These quotes symbolize the type of thinking found in Voltaire's day. This was the type of thinking that the Enlightenment school of thought was trying to get away from, and the type of nonsense Candide will challenge to some extent at the end and soon break away from.