Examples Of Satire In Candide

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In Candide, Voltaire uses a wide range of literary devices to portray satire. The main character, Candide has lived in the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia, where money is no issue and everyone inside the castle has a pretty happy life. Candide’s mentor and tutor, Pangloss teaches optimistic principles without any troubles. Candide has stayed pretty sheltered living in Thunder-ten-tronckh and doesn’t have to concern himself with wealth or other hardships of the outside world. But after he was caught by the Baron, who found him kissing his daughter, Cunégonde, he was banished from the castle. He then goes on a journey to get back his love and her freedom. Throughout the novel, Candide comes across many religious figures. These figures …show more content…

From having the love of his life taken away from him, to facing beatings, attacks, drowning, and earthquakes. Yet he still remained positive that everything was "the best of all possible worlds,” which was learned from Pangloss’s teachings. Problem after problem, Candide believes this is the best solution that can occur to him. Nothing works in his favor, even if he may think so. This mocks the Leibnizian theory, which stated that the world is the best that God could make it and that because God is perfect, then his creation, the world, is perfect as well. Pangloss has been known to be the symbol of this ideology of absolute optimism. Even with all of the suffering he sees through his travels with Candide, he asserts that all of the evils in the world are needed and that in the end, everything will be worth …show more content…

In Chapter 17, after Candide and Cacambo run out of food and their horses die, they run into the city of Eldorado. Here Candide gets a lot of money and his belief that everything happens for a reason is in full effect. But even with all of this money, he is unhappy without Cunégonde and decides to leave and continue his search for her. The arrests and beatings he gets, boosted Pangloss’s philosophy. But this is tested when Candide’s money ends up in the hands of crooks such as Vanderdendur, who steals one of Candide’s jewel-laden sheep in the nineteenth chapter. This shows that money seems to be creating more problems than what people had originally

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