Satire in Candide and Lexx
Voltaire's Candide is a story about a young man learning about the realities of the world; realities he never could have believed to happen in life because his education heavily involves the idea that this is the "best of all worlds." Salter Street Films' Lexx is a story about a group of misfit adventurers and the calamity that befalls them after they steal the Lexx, a Manhattan-sized insect with the ability to destroy planets. Though the two stories have more in common than one might expect, given the difference of medium, much more is different between the two, even with satire present in both
The first and most obvious difference between Candide and Lexx is the setting of the two. The Earth as visited by the Lexx is, in itself, unrealistic with its portrayal of everything we consider 'normal' being completely outlandish to the crew. It also follows that if the settings are drastically different, the characters must be as well. Kai is not only an assassin and last of the Brunnen-G, but he has been dead for six thousand years. Stanley Tweedle, captain of the Lexx, has seen enough while traveling on the giant insect to know that such is not the case. The characters between the two stories even journey with different methods; while the cast of Lexx travels through the Light and Dark Universes on an insect spaceship, the cast of Candide travels around the Earth on foot or by transportation such as boats. Even the crew of the Lexx travels around Earth not by such methods, but by using the giant Moths grown on their ship.
The second, and perhaps most important difference between Candide and Lexx is the methods by which the two stories satirize things. As typical of most mode...
... middle of paper ...
...asm comes when the Lexx has finished its meal and, on its way back to orbiting the moon, lets out a burp and licks its chops. The one exception to season four's satire is the series finale during which, among other things, 790 fools the now-senile Lexx into destroying the Earth. This is the ship's final shot before it passes on of old age.
Satire is nothing new. Things have been wrong in the world since recorded history and there have always, and will always be people to criticize the flaws in the way things work. While satire today is often told differently then that of Voltaire's time, the principle is certainly the same.
Works Cited
Lexx. Screenplays by Paul Donovan, Lex Gigeroff, and Jeff Hirschfield. Sci-Fi channel.
Produced by Salter Street Productions. 1997-2002.
Voltaire. Candide. Trans. Lowell Bair. Bantam Books. New York, 1959.
In his work, Candide, Voltaire uses satire as a means of conveying his opinions about many aspects of European society in the eighteenth century. Voltaire successfully criticizes religion, the military, and the philosophy of optimism.
Anorexia Nervosa may be described directly as an eating disease classified by a deficit in weight, not being able to maintain weight appropriate for one’s height. Anorexia means loss of appetite while Anorexia Nervosa means a lack of appetite from nervous causes. Before the 1970s, most people never heard of Anorexia Nervosa. It was identified and named in the 1870s, before then people lived with this mental illness, not knowing what it was, or that they were even sick. It is a mental disorder, which distorts an individual’s perception of how they look. Looking in the mirror, they may see someone overweight
Voltaire's Candide is a novel which contains conceptual ideas and at the same time is also exaggerated. Voltaire offers sad themes disguised by jokes and witticism, and the story itself presents a distinctive outlook on life. The crucial contrast in the story deals with irrational ideas as taught to Candide about being optimistic, versus reality as viewed by the rest of the world.
In the beginning of both of the pieces of literature, the main character(s) have not had the experience that will shape their values yet. Rather, as time moves forward in the stories, the
The Romans were on one of the greatest people of all. They had power, wealth, and even a half of the world. They built one of the strongest and vast empire that world has ever seen. They came from nothing to something awesome. It started of as a city and ended up being one of the greatest empire of all. This essay is going to focus on the Roman Empire from the rise to the fall and the government, architecture, mythology, Family Structure, and Food of the Romans.
Anorexia is not a choice to be made. It is brought on by many pressures to be thin and it clouds one’s ability to see herself/himself as she/he really is, which is usually dangerously thin. Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. Sufferers starve themselves and have extreme weight loss. When starving themselves, anorexics may suffer from terrible hunger pains, but feel rewarded when they can make it through a certain time period, usually a day, then work up to two days and so on.
Anorexia nervosa, more commonly known as anorexia- an emotional and medical disorder, generally is the lack of food consumption due to a constant fear of gaining weight, an objection to preserve or control a healthy body weight, and a mentally distorted body image. This primarily begins with ones misery with their body. You start to block out everything in your life (school, work, friends, and hobbies) and mainly focus on meals and what should or shouldn’t be consumed. The thing that mainly diagnoses one as anorexic is the simple fact that "... No matter how skinny you become, it's never enough." People diagnosed with this eating order are often in denial and see no wrong doings when they could potentially reach a state of health the body cannot maintain and die.
One of worlds most popular and most often diagnosed eating disorder is anorexia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric disorder characterized by abnormal eating behavior, distorted body image and an unrealistic fear of gaining weight (Ehrlich 2010). People who have been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa tend to obsess about their weight and what they eat. Many people attempt, and succeed, to maintain a weight that is abnormal of their age and height. To prevent gaining weight anorexics may starve themselves, go on an unhealthy diet and/ or exercise excessively (Mayo Clinic 2012).
The experiences that we face in life vary from person to person and one of the greatest differences occur between men and women. In Voltaire 's novel Candide a great deal of the experiences that each of the characters face is unique to them, but the experiences of the women differ greatly to those of the men. The way the two sexes handled those experiences also varied and reflected a satirical view of the times in which Voltaire lived. The differences in events between the men and women can be seen in a few key points that are seen throughout the Novel.
Without an honorable reputation a person is not worthy of respect from others in their society. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, the struggle to shake off the past is an underlying theme throughout the novel. Characters in this novel go through their lives struggling with trying to cope with the guilt and shame associated with actions that lost them their honorable reputation. Particularly, Hawthorne shows the lasting effect that sin and guilt has on two of the main characters in the book: Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale.
Bizarre, devastating, and baffling are three words that describe the anorexia nervosa disease. By definition, anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder in which a normal-weight person diets and becomes significantly underweight, yet, still feeling fat, continue to starve themselves. The term "anorexia nervosa" literally means nervous lose of appetite. People with the disorder are suppressing a strong desire to eat, because they are afraid of becoming fat. Anorexia is characterized by extreme starvation that leads to a disastrous loss of weight. Anorexia nervosa affects a large number of people today in the world, and does not discriminate against anybody. Its victims can be overweight, thin, young, old, or either sex although, its primary victims are young girls between the age of thirteen and nineteen. This disorder has become more and more common around the world today. It has populated many college campuses, and it is spreading. Recent studies show that almost 20% of college women suffer from anorexia or bulimia (bulimia is a eating disorder similar to anorexia), and the statistic increases to about 50% when so called "fad" bulimics and anorexics are included (Baker 9). This disease takes ordinary, often very beautiful people and drives them to starvation for no apparent reason whatsoever. They do not even seem to realize the extreme danger that comes with not eating a balanced diet. These young people lose so much
Blind optimism has concealed the eyes of human beings from the defects of the world since the age of Enlightenment. Defying the archaic thinking of society, Voltaire searched for practical and useful knowledge to explain the world he lived in. Voltaire mocked philosophers, such as Leibniz ,who believed in the “best of all possible worlds” ,and presupposed that all things happen for a reason rather than convincing himself that good and bad are one and the same( 12). The term blind optimism refers to naievty, or having a tendency to expect the best of all possible outcomes and never accepting conclusions in a negative way. In the novel Candide, Voltaire strikes his major characters with atrocious events to challenge the unquestionable optimistic view of the world, showing how ludicrous blind optimism truly is. Voltaire exemplifies this notion by utilizing characterization of his characters Candide, Pangloss, and Martin to satirically demonstrate how blind optimism hinders the perception of reality
Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire lived from 1694-1778. He was an author and a philosopher whose philosophy stressed rationality, democracy and scientific inquiry. These interests can all be seen in Candide, for example, which has a philosopher for a main character and which satirizes the philosophy of Leibnitz throughout the text. The novel Candide was written in response to the earthquake of 1759 which hit Lisbon and resulted in the instantaneous and indiscriminate deaths of thousands. Appalled by the horrible deaths of so many innocent people, Voltaire was at this time also incensed by Leibnitz who wrote that given the worlds God might have created, by choosing to endow mankind with free will, "the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds." To Voltaire, this response to the earthquake amounted to an abominable moral complacency and indifference by philosophers such as Leibnitz, who Voltaire felt seemed to accept all the other normal suffering and injustice in the world. Hence in Candide, Voltaire relentlessly satirizes Leibnitz's formulation by shifting the stress to "this is the best of all possible worlds" and bringing up the line every time a character encounters a horrible calamity or atrocity. However, it should be added that Voltaire's hatred of injustices perpetrated by the aristocracy, the church and the state--all of which he satirizes in Candide--also grew out of his personal experiences.
Candide: A Satire On The Enlightenment. Works Cited Missing Candide is an outlandishly humorous, far-fetched tale by Voltaire satirizing the optimism espoused by the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. It is the story of a young man’s adventures throughout the world, where he witnesses evil and disaster. Throughout his travels, he adheres to the teachings of his tutor, Pangloss, believing that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. " Candide is Voltaire’s answer to what he saw as an absurd belief proposed by the Optimists – an easy way to rationalize evil and suffering.
In Candide, Voltaire sought to point out the fallacy of Gottfried Leibniz's theory of optimism and the hardships brought on by the resulting inaction toward the evils of the world. Voltaire's use of satire, and its techniques of exaggeration and contrast highlight the evil and brutality of war and the world in general when men are meekly accepting of their fate.