Voltaires Candide - Book Report/Review Example

Voltaire’s Candide is, to say the least, an exaggeration to emphasize one of man’s most inherent qualities, a predisposition to assume that the grass is always greener on the other side but there is no place like home. The novel is a an epic take into the struggles, experiences and life plethora of life events that Candide had to face and overcome in the pursuit of life that he more or less wants. It is, to a substantial degree, a farce on all of the philosophical ideals that may haze more than enlighten the lives of people.

The French writer, in his most notable and classic book, takes the reader into a roller coaster ride of incidents, catastrophes, murder, wars and other events. Candide is an emphatic character comparable to Don Quixote and the windmill. This tradition of adventure and suspense inculcated into the novel is among the most stimulating features of this book. The importance of the character of Pangloss represents to us human reason in a convoluted state. This is not to say that philosophy is unmeritorious, but what the novel shows us is the extremeness of things that may ensue.

It consists some of the most absurd plot such as the dropping of a handkerchief and the inadvertent kiss. The twists and the number of which could no more be farfetched throughout the novel. There seems to be a number of mistaken death that no one actually dies in the end from Cunegonde to her brother to Panglossand and even Candide himself. The names and characters are also odd that include Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, the one-eyed doctor and the prostitute who gave Pangloss syphilis. Everyone has a take on life and on the situations that befall them.

Each is an attestation as to the different spheres of life and the novel, as unnecessarily encompassing as it is culminates in the most simplistic of all endings. Candide presents to as a sort of empty vessel ready to take on the world, hoping to make the best of his fate when he was expelled from the estate of the Baron. “A youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition. His face was the true index of his mind. He had a solid judgment joined to the most unaffected simplicity” (Voltaire, p.1). Despite his reluctance to be parted from Cunegonde, he proceeded to his journey armed with the teachings Pangloss has imparted.

The book covers a number of subjects that we are confronted with everyday. The human relations that prevail throughout the story manifests the point of the author to the state of affairs that govern man in his everyday experience. Perhaps the most intriguing and somehow intriguing and concurrently foolish part of the book, and there were many to say the least, was towards the end when all of the primary characters were already settled on a life on a farm to spend the rest of their days comfortably, given the things they had to go through, they were still unsatisfied and was searching for something more.

The answer was in fact found in plants. They found serenity in the cultivation of the plants and in these they became satisfied, dismissing all the other thoughts that cloud them. The author wants to reiterate the very basic idea that the grass is most green when you yourself had cultivated it, deriving fulfillment from the simplest yet most profound endeavor. Bibliography Voltaire. Candide. Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, 1998.