A Moral Change

In the introduction of the latest edition of a Clock Work Orange, Anthony Burgess says:

“There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters.”

To that he adds

“When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory.”

In my readings, I have noticed this is true. Following this premise, and being that Candide is a novella, a moral change is therefore expected. Although I thought Voltaire would have made Candide stubbornly stay faithful to Pangloss’ optimistic philosophy in the act of ridiculing human obstinacy, I was proved wrong. Finally after the Dutchman’s rip off had been added to his list of disgraces, Candide says “Oh Pangloss! A scandal like this never occurred to you! But it’s the truth, and I shall have to renounce that optimism of yours in the end.” (pg. 86)

Now I know it’s too hasty to predict a moral change yet, but for the first time experience shows Candide that he has to be less naïve. Later in the same page, after Cacambo asks him what optimism is, Candide answers “It’s the passion for maintaining that all is right when all goes wrong with us.”

This reminded me of Ellie Wiesel and his book Night, where he clearly changes his mind on absolutely everything. After what he experienced, the belief of God is futile, and humanity disgusts him. This shows that experience is stronger than influence, and that there is no stance in life that can’t be proven wrong with occurrences.

A moral change in Candide would imply that Voltaire believes people can change, and so his view on life is not all that pessimistic. But if later in the book we see that Candide’s philosophy hasn’t changed at all, then we can assume he feels the same way about humanity, that there’s no possibility of rehabilitation, that we are bound to our beliefs. 

Avoiding Reality

You’re probably familiar with the terms Collateral Damage, Money Laundry, Physically Challenged, Pacification, and Enhanced Interrogation. These are euphemisms and they make a reality that may cause discomfort or insult some people a mild inoffensive phrase. Euphemisms are hyperbolic in nature, because they reduce something aggravating, to mere emotionless words. That hyperbole leads to irony, because the new phrase misleads the reader from its true definition. Isn’t it ironic to call Collateral Damage the death of innocents and the destruction of their property?

Euphemisms therefore are wonderful in satire, yet I have noticed that in Candide, quite the opposite is applied. In Candide, descriptions are very raw and direct. The reader doesn’t expect for the author to be so literal when reading satire. In page 80, Candide asks "Do you mean to say you have no monks teaching and disputing, governing and intriguing, and having people burned if they don't subscribe to their opinions?" There is neither irony nor hyperbole in this passage. Candide is describing what he has seen just as it is. Irony and hyperbole are unnecessary to critiquing these things because they speak for themselves. If Candide's question would have been "You mean there are no monks or the Inquisition here?" then our attention would not be focused on what he really is asking, and there would be no contrast between the utopic civilization of El Dorado, and the seemingly dystopic civilization of the Old World. 

If we were to speak of things as they really are, surely many would be outraged and distressed. Voltaire means to do just that, he explicitly describes things as they are in order to create contrast and make us realize of how stupid some traditions are. “…Cacambo asked one of the lords-in-waiting how he should behave in saluting His Majesty; should he put his hands on his knees or should he grovel, should he put his hands on his head or his behind, or should he lick the dust off the floor; in short, what was the procedure?”(pg.81). It’s very tempting to say there’s a lot of hyperbole in this passage, but often reality needs not the aid of exaggeration to be outrageous. In our world, reality is never confronted, and we find shelter in euphemisms to hide ourselves from the terrible nature of our acts.

Unsubtle Subtleties

This is the first page of Candide

Translated from German? By a Dr. Ralph?

Turns out not only the content of the book is satire, but the book itself is. I don't know how to explain it thoroughly, meaning there must be a term, a category, a name for a work whose content to only is fiction, but that the author has made it have fictional origins as well.

So according to this, that guy Voltaire had absolutely nothing to do with Candide, because the joke has certain wholeness to it. Voltaire created a reality for the book to exist in.

A foot note in page forty-nine confirms that, when Voltaire comments on his own work, as someone else and says "Notice how exceedingly discreet our author is. There has so far been no Pope called Urban X. He hesitates to ascribe a bastard to an actual Pope. What discretion! What tender conscience he shows!

This makes us wonder about the target of the book.

According to the first page, Candide is a serious German tale. Just like in A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, where he speaks seriously about the matter, this book is to be seen like that, but then as we know Voltaire wrote it, we apply that knowledge and it gives a twist to the mockery. These kind of subtle details give entirely a different context to the work. 

Still Life with Candide

Hyperbole is inherent to satire. Candide overflows with hyperbole, the plot is hyperbolic, the descriptions are hyperbolic, the dialogues are hyperbolic, even hyperbole is hyperbolic. With hyperbole's abundance in satire, it is safe to say that the nature of satire lies in exaggeration. 

After the first couple of pages of Candide, the reader is able to capture a certain feeling from the text caused by the incongruence from the severity of the events with the lightness of the narration, that subsequently make you laugh. 

This feeling seemed very familiar to me, of-course I've read satire before, but this time it had a name to it. 

It is a very amusing book I read last year called Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, and God does it resemble Candide. 

The first identifiable similarity is the unsettling feeling they both produce because of the outrageousness of what’s going on, and the children's book style narration it has.

The truth is, both the characters from Candide and Still Life With Woodpecker are always wrapped up in utterly exaggerated, unenviable situations. For example, Princess Leigh-Cheri from S.L.W.W quits school after being asked to resign the cheerleading team because she had a miscarriage in a football game. In the course of a few months she finds herself gaining a cocaine habit, falling in love with a tequila drinking bomber, which leads her to do stupid things like isolating herself in an attic with nothing but a pack of Camels, and then become engaged with a rich Arab, and she ends up locked in a pyramid with her outlaw lover, surviving only of wedding cake and champagne, and sadly dies immolated while attempting to free her man with a dynamite explosion. 

The hyperbole of it all is smothering, just as in Candide.

For instance:

"Just imagine a Pope's daughter, fifteen years old who in the space of three months had suffered poverty and slavery, had been ravished almost every day, seen her mother quartered, endured the horrors of famine and battle and was then dying of the plague in Algiers." (Pg.55)

Another trait they share is how exaggerated situations are used to represent things common of their respective times. For example, in Candide a Jew and a priest where killed by the same hand in a matter of two seconds, and then "The Cardinal was buried in a beautiful church, and Issachar (the Jew) was thrown on the dunghill" (Pg.46) It is Voltaire’s intention to make this huge contrast between both, for he lived in a time of great anti-Semitism among Christians, and he intends to critique it. 

S.L.W.W was written in the early 80's in America, where the Unabomber, UFOs, and ecology where major headlines. It’s not free that the author makes an outlaw bomber miss an ecologist convention because he was drunk, and explode a UFO conference, all of these happening in Hawaii.  There is some serious critique to the America in the early 80's and everything that was going on. 

Finally, and perhaps the most important similarity, is how the characters stand by naive philosophies, all the while life shows them the contrary. Princess Leigh-Cheri is an environmentalist, vegetarian, optimistic, celibate, who believes in making the world a better place. Oh and she loves Ralph Nader.

Candide is tirelessly optimistic, and believes all happens for the best. 

At this point nothing would be farther from the truth, same for Princess Leigh-Cheri.

But remember, in satire not one ironic comment, not one exaggeration is in vain, it's the details that make it work. 

Satire Naked

Upon being asked what satire was, I found myself dumbfounded, like when someone is asked what umami is, and the only thing they can say is "I know it when I taste it." Theres no denying it, satire is quite complex and yet when in direct contact with it, like in the book Candide, theres no escape to it.
There are several components to Satire:
Hyperbole
Irony
Absurdity
And who it is trageting.

Candide's name eludes irony. He is as his name indicates, innocent and naive.
Nevertheless, the situations he is wrapped in are none but disgraceful.
The thing in the book that is completely ironic and borders ridicule is Dr. Pangloss's philisophy that everything happens for the best. This incurable optimism gives a reason for everything being, like if there wasn't an unknown STD "we would have neither chocolate nor cochineal" (pg. 30). Or that "private misfortunes contribute to the general good, so that the more private misfortunes there are, the more we find that all is well." (pg.31)
Fallatic arguments like these abound in the book, and Candide runs his life by them, accepting his miserable fate, and justifying his suffering with a positive encounter.

Voltaire's wit is omnipresent, I laughed all the way through my reading, and now I wonder, what makes it funny. Hyperbole, irony, and absurdity make us laugh, but really, what makes the book genuinly funny, is us imagining Voltaire writing the book with someone or something in mind, therefore what we are truly laughing at is Voltaire's target. As the book is satire, we know it is mocking reality. And so the thought that the irony, hyperbole, and ridicule in the book are not that ficticious provokes a strange feeling of disgust and amusement.

As indicated in the introduction, Voltaire was targeting suffering (among other things) and the perversion of an optimistic philosphy associated with philosophers of his time like Leibnz, Shaftesbury, and Christian Wolf.
Voltaire says in the introduction, "If all is for the best is explained in absolute sense, without offering hope for the future, it is only an insult added to the miseries we endure."

Satire can be funny, but we must not ignore the serious matters that hide behind entretaining wit. Candide is quite sad, if seen from a different point of view. After all earthquakes, wars, rape, famine, corruption and ingenuity are all real.