The Search for Love
A review of Candide by Voltaire
By Julia A. Keirns
I do not own a copy of this book. I had to read it for a Literature class in college and printed a free .pdf file from the internet. Therefore I have no photo to share. For my class report I had to review this book from the theme of love.
Nothing haunts us more than a desire for love or a lack of love. As humans we are creatures born with a desire to love and be loved in return. We love our parents and extended family. We love a favorite food. We love to play or watch a favorite sport. We love to read, or paint, or write. As we mature it is the desire for physical love that becomes primary and this alone has been the cause of fear, hatred, revenge and murder for as long as man has existed. Candide explores the theme of love as the protagonist is driven and motivated by his desire for love.
Candide finds love and then experiences loss of that love in the very beginning of his story and spends most of his life in anguish at the loss. It drives him to find that love again at any cost. He vows to survive whatever life throws at him. He endures more than any man should have to for the love he desires only to find it to be an utter disappointment in the end. The presence of love and the absence of love both cause him to live out his life deeply disappointed in not only love, but in all mankind.
The novel Candide explores the theme of love through the intense relationship of Candide and Cunegonde. Because of their physical lust for each other, both of them suffer many physical and mental tragedies in their lives that could have been avoided had they not offended the Baron with their actions. Candide experienced his first kiss with Cunegonde, discovered what he thought was true love, and from that point on his life, and hers, was a living hell. Candide was tricked into joining the military of the Bulgar army as soon as he was banished from the castle for fondling Cunegonde. As a member of this army he was whipped regularly. He tried to escape but was caught and survived running the gauntlet where four thousand blows of the cane literally ripped the skin off his back as punishment. He later endured the intimate pain of hearing that his precious Cunegonde whom he loved, had died from being raped until she could be raped no more by none other than the Bulgars he had been forced to defend.
Cunegonde’s story was just as bad. She had not only survived the massive raping but had eventually been sold into slavery. She endured watching people burned and hanged. She became a sex slave to her master and was forced to perform menial labor duties such as dishes, cleaning, and laundry. Both Candide and Cunegonde were made to see the worst of what the world had to offer. Everything Cunegonde endured can be summed up in her own words, “Upset, bewildered, sometimes taking leave of my senses, and sometimes on the point of dying of weakness, I had my head full of the massacres of my father, of my mother, of my brother, of the insolence of my foul Bulgar soldier, of the stabbing he had given me, of my enslavement, of my occupation as a cook, of my Bulgar captain, of my wretched Don Issachar, of my abominable Inquisitor, of the hanging of Dr. Pangloss, and above all of the kiss I had given you behind a screen, the day when I had seen you for the last time.
The story of Candide begins as him and Cunegonde get caught in inappropriate sexual behavior and Candide is banished from his home and childhood castle. Their lips met; their eyes shone; their knees trembled; their hands strayed. He had fallen in love with her and was made to suffer many tragic events in his life because of that forbidden love. His forced journey leads him into the Bulgar Army where he is treated harshly. Later he learns and believes that everyone in his entire family, including Cunegonde, has been brutally killed. Along the journey he finds wealth and loses wealth, and he discovers that wealth can’t buy him happiness anyway. He mourns the loss of his love until he finds her actually alive. He buys her freedom only to lose her again. At this point, he still loves her and intends to once again find her and marry her. He maintains his optimism through the entire journey believing that everything happens for a reason and trusting the teachings of his beloved Pangloss.
Candide spends his life searching for meaning, success and happiness in the midst of all his trials. As he is thrown from one situation to the next, he discovers that the world is not at its best as his beloved teacher Pangloss has taught him. The world was proving to be one disappointment after another. He witnesses the horrors of battle and war up close. He endures starvation and homelessness and discovers that very few people are friendly enough to help him. The world is a horrible place. He survives a shipwreck, almost drowns and witnesses the hanging of his dear teacher Pangloss. He continues to remain optimistic as he travels to another shore, but by now he is seriously doubting that there is any good in the world at all. He is nearly killed before he and his companion Cacambo discover Eldorado and all the riches it holds. Eldorado is filled with gold and jewels in the form of emeralds, rubies and diamonds of which the people in this hidden village have no use for, since the government provides for all their needs. Candide believes that this wealth will now be the answer to all his problems. He discovers though that it turns out to be of little use to him as further events in his life unfold.
Candide and Cacambo leave Eldorado with their fortune and he sends Cacambo on a secret mission to find Cunegonde and buy her freedom back. He then heads to France where everyone just seems to want his money. He spends months in Venice searching for Cunegonde to no avail and falls into deep despair. He gets sick and is victimized and tricked into losing almost all of his money. The fortune he had found in Eldorado had done nothing but multiply his problems. He eventually leaves France and heads to England where he discovers that Cacambo is now a slave and his precious Cunegonde is still a servant.
Candide is a romantic and believes in everlasting love until the very end of the story. Reunited and telling stories of their survivals, “Candide, the baron, Pangloss, Martin, and Cacambo approached the shores of the Sea of Marmara where the ruler of Transylvania had his house. The first things they saw were Cunégonde and the old woman, who were hanging out some napkins on the line to dry them.” “Candide, the tender lover, on seeing his beautiful Cunégonde weather-beaten, her eyes bloodshot, her throat wizened, her cheeks lined, and her arms red and chapped, was horror-struck and fell back three paces.”
In the end, Candide does finally attain his precious Cunegonde, only to regret promising to love and marry her as she has turned harsh and ugly on the inside and on the outside. He believes he will still love her anyway despite her physical ugliness, but then he sees how hardened her heart has become. He had spent all of this time determined to find her and marry her, only to discover that love and lust do not last forever, and now he did no longer desire to be with her. He vowed to stay true to his word though, be it under pressure, and go through with the marriage even though he no longer wanted to. She was no longer beautiful, and he was no longer attracted to her. Her beauty and lust were gone. The world had turned out to be utterly disappointing and so had his Cunegonde. Everything about this whole life and world had been nothing but a disappointment to him. He wonders what the purpose of life is. Finding love has definitely not been anything but a disappointment, and his shallowness only proves that the world had hardened him along his journey as well.
He embraced his Cunegonde more out of pity at that point than out of love. One would think that after surviving so many horrible events in his life, he would finally be content and happy, but he had seen so many people brutally murdered and been so horribly treated himself that he had no more contentment left in him. Knowing of the horrors Cunegonde herself had endured, finally finding her and being able to marry her, he should have been ecstatic. Nothing could be farther from the truth. “He had been so badly cheated by the Jews that he had nothing left but his little farm; and his wife, who grew more ugly every day, had become shrewish and unbearable.” His friends were worn out from their labors and did nothing but complain. In the end, the harshness of the life they had all been forced to live turned them cynical and ugly, like Cunegonde, on the inside and out. The world and love had proven to be nothing but disappointing.