Candide Summary | Chapterly

Candide by Voltaire: A Complete Summary "We must cultivate our garden." Overview Candide (1759) is the most famous satire of the Enlightenment and one of the sharpest attacks on philosophical optimism ever written. In fewer than a hundred pages, Voltaire sends his naive protagonist through an absurd catalogue of disasters, each more terrible than the last, to demolish the idea that this is "the best of all possible worlds." The novella was written in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people and shook European confidence that a benevolent God had designed a rational universe. Voltaire channels his rage and grief into a work of furious wit, attacking not just philosophical optimism but the Church, the military, colonialism, and every institution that justifies suffering with grand theories. Despite its dark subject matter, Candide is wildly funny. Voltaire's genius lies in describing atrocities with the breezy tone of a travel narrative, making the contrast between horror and cheerful narration devastating. Plot Summary Candide, a gentle young man, lives in the castle of the Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh in Westphalia. His tutor, Dr. Pangloss, teaches him that this is "the best of all possible worlds" and that everything...