compare and contrast aphra Bhen's Oroonoko the royal slave and candide, or optimism

    Candide on the surface is a witty story. However when inspected deeper it is a philippic writing against people of an uneducated status. Candide is an archetype of these idiocracies, for he lacks reason and has optimism that is truly irking, believing that this is the best of all possible worlds. Thus Voltaire uses a witty, bantering tale on the surface, but in depth a cruel bombast against the ignoramuses of his times.

Voltaire's Candide is the story of how one man's adventures affect his philosophy on life. Candide begins his journey full of optimism that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds," but he learns that it is naïve to say that good will eventually come of any evil.

The Story of Candide is a short but diverse story that tells of a young man’s journey for love and understanding and the hardships he faces, all the while keeping a very strong, positive and philosophical outlook on life. The novel takes place both in fictional and existing locations throughout Latin America and Europe during the 1750’s. Voltaire believed that the society he lived in had many flaws, which are often illustrated and satirized in Candide. Candide’s journey portrays the flawed human assumption that the grass is always greener on the other side as well as giving the reader an apt example of an individual’s journey from innocence through a series of trials and tribulations to becoming a mature, experienced and enlightened individual.

Even though many people practiced this doctrine Voltaire did not aside with it instead, he implanted doubts on the chances of achieving true happiness and real conformism. Voltaire’s opinion was that one could not achieve true happiness in the real world but only experience it in an utopia. With the many hardships that Candide goes through ultimately leads him to abandon his attitude of optimism. Candide’s misfortunes and adversities often contrasted with his optimistic view on life. Noticeably, Voltaire uses this satirical piece as a way to criticize this exaggerated optimism. This tale as stated by William Bottiglia, “ Has had a great effect on modern writers who confront mankind’s inhumanity to fellow human beings by presenting the human condition absurdly, ironically, and humorously...” (Bottiglia 112).

oltaire’s Candide provides an Enlightenment religious and social critique of the Old Regime though satire. In Candide, Voltaire depicts the hypocrisy of the religious leaders during the Old Regime time period along with the criticizing the idea that reason can overcome social turmoil.

In Voltaire’s short story Candide (1759) the theme of disillusion is manifested through various aspects of the text. From the moment Candide, whose very name means ‘innocent,’ is banished from the kingdom of Thunder-ten-tronckh, the situations he faces should suffice to disprove his master Pangloss’s theory that this is the “best of all possible worlds.” However it is not just Candide’s internal struggle between Pangloss’s views and his own experience that is representative of the process of disillusion; Candide’s own love for Cunégonde, which is the driving force behind his actions, is not all it seems either. It is not only the characters, however, that undergo the process; contemporary readers themselves, being placed alongside Candide in

Voltaire’s satire contains a strong sense of witful irony and parodies meant to elicit disgust at the topics he is criticizing. “Candide’s” sense of satire is largely derived from the Juvenalian satire which was created by the Roman satirist Juvenal. By using absurdist and ironic images of characters, satirists intend to invoke disgust or laughter at a topic to the point where it is rejected a legitimate. Thi is the point with Voltaire’s mockery of optimism in “Candide”.

Voltaire's Candide is a novel that is interspersed with superficial characters and conceptual ideas that are critically exaggerated and satirized. The parody offers cynical themes disguised by mockeries and witticism, and the story itself presents a distinctive outlook on life narrowed to the concept of free will as opposed to blind faith driven by desire for an optimistic outcome. The crucial contrast in the story deals with irrational ideas as taught to Candide about being optimistic by Pangloss, his cheerful mentor, versus reality as viewed by the rest of the world through the eyes of the troubled character, Martin. This raises the question of whether or not the notion of free will is valid due to Candide’s peculiar timing of his

In “Candide,” Voltaire’s satiric theme is broad and varied. Although the most interesting satire is the one on religion, especially the utopia in which Candide starts off the story in, the first in importance is philosophical optimism, specifically Pangloss’s philosophy which in the novel this philosophical optimism seems to represent mankind's overall and overused optimism as means to copping with tragedy or loss. Pangloss’s philosophy is both the most important point for debate among the novel’s characters and one of the main targets of Voltaire’s satire. Pangloss is inevitably humorous “Pangloss gave instruction in metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology" his character is very predictable and superficial, his so called doctrine on optimism which is voiced out repeatedly that even great evil leads to good is opposed gross absurdity with absurdity. "It is clear, said he, that things cannot be

In Voltaire’s Candide, we are taken by the hand through an adventure which spanned two continents, several countries, and to a multitude of adverse characters. The protagonist, Candide, became the recipient of the horrors which would be faced by any person in the 18th century. But Candide was always accompanied with fellows sufferers, two of which our focus will lay, Pangloss and Martin. In equal respects, both are embodiments of different philosophies of the time: Pangloss the proponent of Optimism and Martin the proponent of Pessimism. Each of the two travelers is never together with Candide, until the end, but both entice him to picture the world in one of their two philosophies. Throughout the story there is an apparent ebb and flow

     “Everything happens for the best, in this the best of all possible worlds.” This is a statement that can be found many times within Voltaire’s Candide. Voltaire rejected Lebitizian Optimism, using Candide as a means for satirizing what was wrong with the world, and showing that, in reality, this is not the best of all possible worlds.

Most of Voltaire’s characters were able to explain why they could consider themselves as the “most unhappy” by providing a story of what had occurred to them. Their experiences vary from natural to man-made misfortunes. However, even though, the characters’ reactions to their misfortunes are of a similar, the experiences between the male and female characters of Candide are quite different in regards to what is taken away from them.

Exploratory expeditions to the New World quickly led to colonial settlements, as the major European countries vied with each other for a portion of the western hemisphere’s riches. »full text

1. Based on the readings from weeks one and two, discuss the images of America the European writers constructed to promote colonization and settlement. What kinds of unique natural resources and environmental factors did they extol in their accounts of the New World? Relate these images to natural resources and environmental factors today.

Aphra Behn’s novel, Oroonoko, gives a very different perspective on a slave narrative. Her characters embody various characteristics not usually given to those genders and races. Imoinda’s character represents both the modern feminist, as well as the subservient and mental characteristics of the typical eighteenth-century English woman. Oroonoko becomes an embodiment of what is normally a white man’s characteristic; he is the noble, princely, and sympathetic character that is not usually attributed to black men in general throughout most novels of slavery. The complete opposite character style is given to the slavers; the English are viewed as the barbaric, cunning, brutal characters that are usually portrayed in opposite and more generous