Candide's absurdity and Europe's setbacks: Candide 16-20

Chapters 16-20 of Candide have less social targets, than the chapters before, but it still has a lot of attacks made towards certain institutions. Voltaire introduces new characters and cultures, to form a comparison between the different types of societies and their ideologies.

The character of Candide is a perfect example of the absurd within satire. He justifies his most impulsive actions, by using the most absurd reasoning. Candide has a very local view of the world, meaning that he is not aware that there is an entire universe out there that he hasn’t explored. This is clearly addressed when he kills a couple of monkeys, afraid that they were going to seriously hurt two girls. “...he fired and killed the two monkeys. ‘I have delivered those two poor creatures from great danger. If I have sinned in killing an Inquisitor and a Jesuit, I have made amole amends in saving the lives of these two girls.”(69) The absurdity of killing two monkeys because they could hurt some girls is just too ridiculous. Candide not only takes it seriously, but he also thinks that he is a hero because he does that. His actions are very impulsive and he doesn’t relate to the rest of the people in the world.

The next quote I found has a lot of prejudicial thoughts made by Candide, who supposes that the Orellions would mistreat him when he arrived to their country. In a way, they did want to kill him at first when they thought that he was a Jesuit, but when they found that he had killed one, they were truly kind with Candide, “When all is said and done, there is a sterling goodness in unsophisticated nature; for instead of eating me, these people behaved more politely as soon as they found out I was not a Jesuit.”(72) This quote shows two things. The first one is that Candide thinks the worst about the natives, and in a way they also think the worst about the Jesuits, for their reign over these kinds of populations had always been very cruel. He continues to think that they are complete savages, and the satirical element that Voltaire uses to express this thought is the one of them becoming polite when they knew that Candide was not a Jesuit. The author is making fun of the natives and of their ignorance, because during those times, the native tribes were looked down at all the times because of their cultural differences with the Europeans.

When Candide arrives to Peru, the tone of the novel changes, and the target is not the ignorance of the natives in America or their hate towards the Jesuits. The target in this new chapter is the European society and the foundations of its economy. As soon as they see that there is gold everywhere in that country they begin to recollect it like beggars. No body in Peru was used to that sort of behavior for some sand and rocks, and so they had reactions such as this one, “Gentlemen it is obvious that you are strangers here, and we are not used to foreigners. So please excuse our laughter at your offering of paying us with stones off the road.”(77) The fact that the Indigenous are laughing at the Europeans is a satirical element placed there by the author to criticize the mercantilism that had overtaken Europe’s economy for so long. Voltaire obviously wanted to see changes in the economy, so he mentioned this to state it clearly to the public.

Finally, I encountered this quote, “I have no right to detain strangers against their will; that would be a tyranny which neither our customs nor laws could justify. All men are free.”(83) After analyzing this segment of the text, I realized that Voltaire is trying to show that the Peruvian natives are much wiser than the Europeans, and that the real savages are those who live in the old continent. They are savages because they do not respect human rights as they should and they will do whatever it takes to gain more power, even if it means to destroy the rest of the people. Voltaire was stating that Europe needed to develop some natural rights and laws so that the tyranny of the monarchs and enforce them. This would end the tyrannies of the monarchs, and the pole would be able to live in peace. These are principles that would be used during the French Revolution.