The Hidden Message in Candide

Candide is fictional work by the French writer, Voltaire. It is one of his best-known texts and appeared later in his career. This functional work isn't his first having the philosophical sorts. His writing is travelling type in a particular tradition.

Travelling characters explore the world and see the difference between the two societies. Either real or imaginary characters with Voltaire's own thoughts and ideas.

About Candide

Voltaire's work is talking about a young man travelling with a few people and following his tutor's optimistic ideas. Candide travelled outside Europe while Voltraie didn't which make it a functional work His journeys lead to making negative and even racist judgments according to the differences, he also compares and finds how much his society is evil, and these journeys make him see the universality of humans.

Candide is focusing on a philosophical satire tale written to mock the falling individuals and their people by using indirect satire.

Voltaire's Idea

Candide is an example of a functional work of satire because it addresses what Voltaire deems to be pressing social evils rather than minor vices or follies, and it does with an unmistakably harsh tone. So, as a satirist, Voltaire lets all his threads lose in Candide, his principal target being Leibniz, a German philosopher of his time, who firmly believed that in the creation of the present world God had taken into consideration the prospects of all possible worlds, and had selected the best of them. He also is satirizing the religious community of his time for being hypocritical despite their pious religious morals, and the religious people that cheat on, and act like they possess saintly qualities.

In conclusion, Voltaire levelled his sharpest criticism against the nobility, philosophy, the church, and cruelty, and mock their falling off them. He argues that evil serves no teleological purpose and that optimism is absurd, which is not like what Candide's tutor used to say.

References

Pacheco An & Johnson Da (eds) 2010, ‘The Renaissance and Long Eighteenth Century’, London.