Voltaire's Candide Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Voltaire's Candide - Essay Example Female characters have been shown inhumanly beaten, molested, raped, enslaved and sold again and again from one hand to another. Although, Voltaire was popular for having vocally favored and propagated the equal rights of women, yet, this feeling is not noticeably perceptible in Candide, particularly taking into consideration the reality that the major female characters are negatively portrayed as prostitutes, lustful women that marry for wealth, infected disease-carriers, and most prominently victims. In general, while Voltaire’s effort was definitely seditious and critical of society, any prospective revolutionary value lies only within the sagacity that it uncovered weaknesses in the prevailing communal configuration. Female Characters; Evolution of Sufferings Throughout the novella, its female characters have endured numerous challenges and undergone extreme sufferings, which have made it tremendously difficult for Candide to continue to believe Pangloss's philosophy. Huma ns are either destined to live in misery or in the lethargy of boredom. This is ridiculing and is brought about by the famous saying, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". And in no way are we meant to be receiving Pangloss as a believable character; like Candide he is over exaggerated and distorted to the extent that his philosophy is almost inseparable from his character. One finds that Pangloss is a recurring nightmare of Candide in the way that he constantly returns from moments of almost certain peril alive, and therefore re-ignites the morsels of optimism that Candide still contains. Pangloss maintains that this is the best of all possible worlds, when really they are living in a cave, cut off from the suffering that still rages in the outside world. The Writer’s Purpose of Specific Depiction of Female Characters One must assume that his main purpose throughout the novella is that he provides a hole through which Voltaire can attack the optimists, bu t underlyingly to keep the story alive in the way that Candide still maintains faith and optimism that all will turn out well in the end. The significance of the Eldorado episode is to provide a frame of reference from which to compare Europe. Voltaire uses Eldorado rhetorically to contrast vices of the real world. What he is really doing is enforcing the fact that Europe is full of evil, sarcastically saying, "If you hadn’t noticed yet this is how bad Europe is," compared with somewhere in South America. But the Eldorado episode brings Candide riches, and this is a chance for Voltaire to put Candide up on a pedestal and then bring him right down again, and lower. Candide loses all his money and realizes that it just makes him a target for all sorts of swindlers, like the Vanderdendur and the Surinamese officers who try and get as much money from Candide as possible. Eldoardo is Voltaire’s paradise, his ideal world, it is void of religion and rules, it is educational, and practical, and the people there are friendly. His financial injury inspires more pessimism in him than violence ever did. This crushing of Candide through the removal of his riches lets Voltaire really point out the power of greed in man and he thoroughly ridicules the irrationality of human priorities. But one must also understand how Eldorado shows how insignificant and valueless something can be if there it exists in large quantities. So one would argue that the