Really?

By far the most screwed up book I have read in a long time, scratch that, the weirdest book ever written! Voltaire’s cunning tactics of satire, give the book that extra degree of spice in which the book excels. The book goes from: Characters disappearing and appearing, two different worlds, and random lives are taken from the most random occurrences. All this accumulates to one hell of a novel, you read from sex scenes to ideas and philosophies that still haven’t been answered today. Voltaire addresses his fellow countrymen by banding all the flaws of society, making fun of them and then eventually giving it a solution or an example where the world does operate correctly to his standards. For example: "We never pray,’ said this good and venerable man; ‘we have nothing to ask of God, since He has given us everything we need. But we thank him unceasingly"( 79) Voltaire here criticizes his European grounds by expressing the European daily view of "enough is never enough", he points out that his people only want to receive, but are never willing to give. But here is where Voltaire thrives in making his point, he not only expresses his perspective, he makes it seem possible, achievable. Voltaire mentions that across the Atlantic Ocean, people will find communities thriving of culture and well-beings, where people have what they need and are content with the lives they live, making thus a more successful society. Voltaire makes sure that his goals are in fact possible and no only that, but people are already living happy lives with such philosophies. So all this persuasive writing, drastic turn of events, and overall unimaginable scenarios that Voltaire makes up and elaborates, texts that are still read four-hundred years after his death. Ends with a conclusion, named "conclusion"? Voltaire are you *&%$in kidding me? That’s worse than any thing you can imagine. Besides deciding to end the book because your pen ran out of ink, now you end such a text with "conclusion.” 

Bite Me Voltaire, You Bastard.

Russian Roulette

As I had said before, it's safe to say that Candide’s character is much like a person with a mental disability, to fully grasp the world. In other words, straight up stupid. But reading the last line of Candide, something made me think twice about Candide's perspective on the world. "That's true enough, but we must go and work the garden."(144) Finally, Candide changes, he leaves his naive diapers and steps into some boxers. The whole book was based on this personality of some kid, experiencing horrific things around the world, but somehow justifying such acts as though he were blind. Candide finally realizes that the world is a bet, in other words, a Russian roulette. You can choose to take life in two different perspectives: 1. Making your own luck or, 2. Letting your life fly by in front of you. It might be easier to comprehend what I'm saying if I put it into a real life situation: Imagine your car's breaks have been failing  to respond accurately, the past couple of times you taken your baby on a spin. Tomorrow’s meeting is located in a pretty downhill environment. 1. You can put your very life in the hands of fate or 2. You can go and get them checked. You can rely on luck to get you through the day or you can actually go and build your own luck. Voltaire finally expresses his opinion on an ideal lifestyle, by clearly expressing that a life of "cultivating" and taking action will be bountiful in the long run. If you don’t get the brakes checked in your life, chances are that you'll be trying to justify the series of "misfortunate" events caused by your so-called luck.

*Remember the only thing that can really happen, if you choose to pull the trigger is...let's let fate decide. 

Survival Of The Meanest

Candide keeps hurling obstacles at little Candide, fortunately the boy has not had to face many obstacles by himself, he has had the presence of the Sailor, Pangloss,  the Old woman, and now Cacambo. For the exception of the beloved Dr. Pangloss, the rest of Candide´s guardians have been through tough times, or have lived through many experiences which grants them with know-how such as to Cacambo. As a result of either rough experience or simply having experienced many tasks in life, these guardians have managed to pull through and have managed to keep the socially handicapped, Candide. These guardians of Candide and their past leads me to to believe that the only way to survive in a world like ours is to be the quickest to the gun.
Voltaire shows how the people who have seen the utmost atrocious things like the old woman, are the ones who manage to pull out of the rubble. But this is not necessarily a good thing, espeacailly due to the fact that after watching such atrocities the person isn't the same, and can even be called "extra-terrestial." An interesting message, or maybe i might be the only one interpreting such a message. But it is clear that the people who don't doubt a second whether to pull the trigger are the ones who survive. So what does this situation make of society, a living hell? This logic of living makes life a constant duel, a non-stop game of cat and mouse, and the first one to stop and breathe, is the looser. A deadly case of evolution, if this is how the "successful" human was categorized in Voltaire´s time, what did Voltaire think the human race would be at to this day, better? Or still revolutionizing to have a society full of hulks?

Burn

There was no Valentine´s Day for Candide this year, he actually got a taste of some deep South American burn. Once the Argentinian Governor shows up in Candide, it starts to look pretty murky for Peter Pan. Even though Candide loves Lady Cunegonde and vice versa, he has nothing to offer such a woman. Due to this fact, i would like to defend Lady Cunegonde´s role-model personality and pose a question to the human race: What is the most important thing in a love relationship, what the guy can buy you or his profound love towards you? You should have already answered that question, it´s obviously the money! I really hope no one was so naive to actually think that the affection your couple has towards you is more important. If I were Lady Cunegonde, I would obviosuly pick the man who wants just form 9:30 pm- 1:30 am, and leave that so-called Candide to the wolves. After all, he has only loved me and cared for me.
Candide again seems to be left for the wolves, Voltaire persists on showing every aspect of the human race, stretching from the Iberian Peninsula, to the Straight of Magellan. Voltaire illustrates the human with the utmost perfection: selfish and cowardly. He writes with the utmost sincerity of the social problems that the world still faces to this day. The example of Lady Cunegonde´s resected play of leaving Candide to fend for himself against the Spanish prosecutors serves the purpose of grossly simplifying the world´s situations. Who ever thinks that the human can live in unity and without greed getting in the way of progress is either stupid or is a creation of Walter Disney. But one must be reminded that Voltaire was a man of innovation and mostly innovation o social reform, so i cannot stop asking myself if Voltaire has plans for a brighter society further in the book or will he continue to show the bloody flaws of the human race.

Thank God, A Seatbelt.

Approaching Chapter 12 of Candide, the reader starts to realize something fascinating about Candide, his uselessness. Maybe uselessness is too rough a word for a character that the reader grows close to due to his naitevte. There I think instead of useless; naive is the correct word for describing Candide. The main cause of this "Peter Panish" way of life has already been mentioned in my previous blog: The Philosopher of the Holy Roman Empire, the sole brain to teach metaphyisco-theologo-cosmolo-nigolgy, the one and only, Dr. Pangloss.

Candide finds himself enduring epic events, but somehow he seems to find a way to justify these actions. And unfortunately his soul mate, Lady Cunegonde, has had her fair share of time with Dr. Pangloss. So if you step out of the chaos for just a moment and grossly simplify the situation in Candide, it´s quite funny. I´ll draw it out for you: dumb and dumber. You might ask me, how could you call Lady Cunegonde naive? "...by celebrating an auto-da-fe, to which he did me the honor of inviting me. I had an excellent seat, and delicious refreshments were served to the ladies between Mass and the execution. “(Forty-two.) That should be enough to support my idea of why I think Candide and her Excellency aren´t the best couple for embarking on an odyssey.

So knowing that the reader would find himself either wanting to strangle or hurl himself into the book, Voltaire places a guardian angel with Candide and Lady Cunegonde, the old woman. With having only been in the storyline a couple chapters, it becomes obvious that she will be the lifeline of the two. She manages to think outside the box, something that Lady Cunegonde has a challenge with and well something that Candide will never be able to accomplish. She acts as a seatbelt to the couple: brainstorms plans to escape, to survive, and to slowly open Candide and Lady Cunegonde minds´. My question is, will the old woman be able to erase Dr. Pangloss´s mentality out of the two or will she spoon feed them all the way to safety?

Blinded By The Light...

A shade of "dark" light has been cast over the eyes of Candide, a light that has not only been limiting Candide's embracement of the world, but has also put his life at risk. But before going into the series of misfortunate of events that have been cast over Candide, one must take a couple steps back and fully take in Voltaire’s fundamental ideologies: "Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." What does this quote say to the public? 

For many, this quote is a message to the people of Voltaire's era, a message of defiance or maybe a call to action for the French people. A wake-up call to really see who was ruling them or influencing their daily lives, and as most knew, Voltaire wasn’t the biggest fan of the French Crown and had even worse ties with the Roman Catholic Church. Although that quote from Voltaire isn’t identically "copied and pasted" into Candide, Voltaire substitutes this idea with "The Philosopher of the Holy Roman Empire", Dr. Pangloss. 

There exists no better definiton/example of Voltaire's satire as to Dr. Pangloss. Voltaire uses Dr. Pangloss to illustrate the pathetic ness of society, to capture the absurdness of the ideas that came from people, who were supposedly fit for influencing other or for ruling entire empires. Throughout Dr. Pangloss's involvement in Candide, his absurdity seems to grow and literally spreads to infect the people around him; his ridiculous ideology starts to take a toll on the prospect of reality of Lady Cunegonde and Candide himself. But leaving aside Pangloss's ideas of the "greater good", Voltaire gives him a trait, a trait that in history has proven to be possessed by some of the most memorable leaders. This trait for some has been eternally successful, but for most, it has eventually proven to be "auto destruction." Pangloss has the gift of talking his way through life, convincing people to follow his steps, steps that will "lead" people to the greater good. Basically promises are what enabled Dr. Pangloss to achieve such admiration from people such as Candide and Lady Cunegonde, much like leaders have been doing ever since the birth of man. What is even more ironic is the way Dr. Pangloss dies, with that said the perfect parallel for Dr. Pangloss is Maximilien Robespierre. 

Robespierre had a very similar way of operating; he used his absurd ideas of the greater good to gain favorable support, targeted the "future" to spread his ideas. Robespierre like Pangloss was a mad men, even though Pangloss never went himself to the killing fields (As Robespierre), he justified them as "for the greater good."  And last, but definitely not least, is that both of their lives ended due to their tongue. The same tool that got them to the peak of their lives was the sole reason of their execution. The ideas of these men took the real out of reality; they fantasized with utterly absurd optimism, ideas that everything was meant to happen for the greater good. Their tongues blinded the people around them with a fake sense of good, a sense that put band-aids on gushing wounds. 

Between The Lines

With only a few chapters of Voltaire’s Candide, under my belt, I am becoming more keen and cautious on spotting a silent but deadly factor in Voltaire's writing. Voltaire embeds his messages through a very subtle and elegant fashion, he makes sure never to reveal his true ideas out-front. As I read, I find myself lost in a sea of words that at first glance don’t have a "significant" or contributing factor. But as I read it again, somehow with a closer eye, I reveal ideas and questions that are embedded deep between the lines of Candide. As a famous man once said: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." Doubt is much involved in Voltaire's passages; he leaves everything up for grabs, leaving the obvious to his criteria of criticism, "the patriots of France." And the embedded to the witty. I mention the words "patriot" to draw a parallel to Chapter. 3 in Candide, How Candide escaped from the Bulgars, and what happened to him afterwards.  

The hard-core war fanatic that Voltaire proved to be with his Enlightment writings takes his time to fully "glorify" the "heroes" of his country. He devotes more than half of his chapter, describing the "heroic butchery" of his countrymen. Describing the: beauty of two well trained armies, excellent tactics, the admiralty of a massacre, and the worthy ruins justified by "international law." It takes time to fully digest and realize what Voltaire is expressing, some people don’t even notice, that is the beauty of the Frenchman’s writing. That urging in your mind to reread the passage once more to fully comprehend, or taking the risk of falling victim to Voltaire's writing.