Voltaire\'s \"Candide\" Part I PDF

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Summary/reactive essay of Voltaire's "Candide" Part I...

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Andrew Lisa Throughout the beginning of Voltaire’s Candide, it becomes clear that he includes many examples in which the church is criticized and often sarcastically set apart and treated better than those who are suffering throughout the world. Specifically, in chapter nine Voltaire distinguishes between the two men who shared Candide’s lover Cunegund by showing the two different ways in which their dead bodies were treated. Voltaire writes, “My lord, the Inquisitor, was interred in a magnificent matter, and Master Issachar’s body was thrown upon a dunghill” (Voltaire 22). This striking difference in care for the dead shows Voltaire’s condescension of the fear which the church invoked on those it persecuted during the Inquisition, which Voltaire makes clear he disagrees with. Another aspect of the hypocrisy of the church which Voltaire points out is woven into chapter ten of Candide regarding its possessions. Cunegund awakes in the morning and finds that all of her jewels have been taken, and it is suspected that a Reverend Franciscan father is to blame. Candide then recalls what Pangloss once stated which was that, “the goods of this world are common to all men, and that everyone has an equal right to the enjoyment of them” (Voltaire 23). Voltaire uses this idea which Candide brings up in order to ironically juxtapose it with the idea that stealing is generally considered wrong, yet a reverend is found to be stealing from them without leaving anything for them to survive off of for the journey to come. ------In The Motorcycle Diaries, two men travel to a impoverished place in their home country in order to help treat a leper colony. Putting their own lives at risk multiple times, this journey transforms their lives in order to make them more openminded and compassionate to the sufferings of people around them.----------...