The Garden of Eden

What is life? People are constantly trying to find a utopia but I'm sorry to break your bubble guys, there's no such thing as it. Perfection is non existant, what might seem perfect to someone might not be to others so nothing will ever be perfect for everyone. We all have a different perception of perfection and what our own utopia should be like. 

               According to Pangloss life was a type of utopia whereas everything was for the best, but the question is: was it really for the best? Throughout the story Candide realizes that life is everything but perfect and starts doubting Pangloss´s views about life. When Pangloss and Candide and the rest of the group talked with the Turk they noticed it was true. Life has “three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty.”(143) they saw that life is not as perfect as it seems and you have to recreate it to what you want it to be just like nature. Voltaire uses the Garden of Eden as a symbol just because of that, nature can be molded and shaped into what you want it to be just like life.

               For those that don’t know the story behind the Garden of Eden it is a biblical garden created by god. It is a “utopia”, God created Adam and provided him with everything even a women Eve from his own flesh, but the only thing he couldn’t do was eat the fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. This place was paradise but one of the reasons perfection can’t exist is because no one is ever satisfied with what they have. Adam and Eve greedy and wanting more than what they had they ate the fruits of the tree and “Man was forever doomed to a life of toil and restlessness, with pressures, temptations, and adversity at every corner.” http://www.israel-a-history-of.com/biblical-garden-of-eden.html.

               What does this have to do with Candide? At the very end of the book Voltaire uses the Garden of Eden to symbolize life, because life may be paradise, but destiny is in your own hands and based on the decisions you make your life will be good or bad.

Church, Corruption, Avarice

HUMANITY: Voltaire’s main approach throughout the entire book Candide. This book is based upon the different characteristics that portray the human race. The book especially reflects upon the positive aspects that shape us into a mass of naïve and careless people. Why naïve? Some may ask. This is because most of the people expect things to happen. They expect life to be good, some believe that their destiny lies in the hands of god and I don’t want to seem disrespectful but I find that pathetic and simply naïve. I am not a religious person, so I think my destiny depends on my actions and my decisions. It’s not as if I can pray to god that I get an A on this blog entry, I have to work on it so that I can achieve that goal. Things don’t just happen. We have to make them happen.   

               Voltaire criticizes many aspects of humanity but there is one in particular that is repeatedly mentioned in the book, religion. People need something to grasp onto when life stabs them in the back, but I don’t agree with the fact that most of the people rely on faith to succeed. He doesn’t criticize religion directly but he does criticize one of the mayor institutions that enforce it, the church.

“I was an innocent little girl when you first saw me, so a friar who was my confessor had little difficulty in seducing me.”(114)

               This shows the corruption of church and clearly the way Voltaire writes about it is like if it was one of the most common things. It is a direct way of talking about the dishonesty of the church towards its principles. Aren’t the friars supposed to be abstinent? Can they be involved with a woman? They can’t or at least not in the catholic religion. That seems like corruption to me.

               I think one of the main points Voltaire wants to prove through Candide is that money brings evil upon the people.  It’s at such an extent that even the church and the religious people which are supposed to be “good” turn out to be the most greedy and envious of all.

“He realized that the lady who pretended to be Cunégonde was a fraud, that the abbé who had so rapidly taken advantage of Candide´s innocence was also a fraud, and the officer another fraud..” (108)

    “Sermons I have preached have brought me some me in a little money, though the Prior robs me of half of it; at any rate I am left enough to pay for my girls”(116)

            These here are two examples of the greediness and corruption money brought not only in common people but even in religious “holy” people. The first quote represents evil because even the abbé (priest) took advantage of Candide and tried backstabbing him with his own weaknesses (Cunégonde) just because he wanted to steal money. The little I know about the church and the people that belong to that institution is that they shouldn’t be greedy and that they shouldn’t have the need to have money. These two quotes prove that even if the doctrines of the church say they shouldn’t be that way they still were and made unholy acts that were a sign of corruption.