Are Voltaire's and Goethe's social criticisms responsible for their protagonists' different ends - Term Paper Example

The overview of these stories will provide some striking similarities in authors approach to magnify the evil elements of the society. Both protagonists had an ongoing journey of pain and agony which was the product of their personal believes and notions clashing with that of the society. As Voltaire pictures the horrific outcome of war: After passing over heaps of dead or dying men, the first place he came to was a neighboring village, in the Abarian territories, which had been burned to the ground by the Bulgarians, agreeably to the laws of war.

Here lay a number of old men covered with wounds, who beheld their wives dying with their throats cut, and hugging their children to their breasts, all stained with blood. There several young virgins, whose bodies had been ripped open, after they had satisfied the natural necessities of the Bulgarian heroes, breathed their last; while others, half-burned in the flames, begged to be dispatched out of the world. The ground about them was covered with the brains, arms, and legs of dead men” (Voltaire 10, 11).

Candide tried to flee from the place as soon as possible reflecting his hatred for war and to some extent his dissociation of emotions towards the victims. Here, Voltaire tried to highlight one of the dark sides of the society where woman were brutally victimized and used as a source to satiate the animal hunger of human flesh. Even the main characters of the novel Cunegonde, the old woman and Paquette were raped or made sex slaves. Moreover he criticized the psychology of the army men who proudly kills innocent people and quench their animal thirsts by sarcastically entitling them as ‘heroes’.

Similar incidence happened in the other novel when Werther showed grieve over the heartache of country lad who tried to rape her mistress though he loved her so much. Goethe’s character also questioned the dim line between love and lust which