Sometimes, there’s more to Lit than meets the eye.
Gardens appear in several important passages in Candide. First, Candide’s uncle banishes him from the family’s country home and garden after he finds Candide kissing Cunégonde. Thi...
Dr. Pangloss, like the majority of the main characters in Candide, symbolizes an ideology and a way of life. Pangloss’s absolute Optimism is a mockery of the philosophy of an Enlightenment th...
The land of El Dorado is an embodiment of Voltaire’s vision of an ideal society. El Dorado is a place of relative equality and advanced science. It is free of greed, pretension, religious con...
Like it or not, syphilis does indeed function as a symbol in Candide. You might have noticed lots of references to original sin. Right? Well, syphilis was doing a little European tour at the time V...
Cunégonde's Jewish owner, Don Isaachar, functions as a symbol for all the prejudice we see in Candide. Isaachar, in particular, is a target for anti-Semitism, portrayed stereotypically as weal...
