Candide Chapter 8 Summary

  • Cunégonde tells her story to Candide:
  • Bulgar soldiers attack and kill her family and rape her. While Cunégonde fights off her attacker, a captain comes in and, enraged at the officer's disrespect, kills him. He then takes Cunégonde as a prisoner of war.
  • The captain keeps Cunégonde as his servant for three months and then sells her to a Jewish businessman. The businessman shares her services (yes, those services) with the same Inquisitor who ordered the execution of Pangloss and flogging of Candide.
  • Cunégonde wards off the sexual advances of both men.
  • Cunégonde attends the post-earthquake execution and recognizes Candide.
  • Cunégonde’s story ends.
  • Back in the present, Candide and Cunégonde eat dinner together and hang out until one of her owners, the businessman Don Issachar, comes to get her.