Gardens and Gardening
How Does Your Garden Grow?Answer: not with Optimism, you chumps.Gardens appear in a few important passages in Candide. First, Candide’s uncle banishes him from the family’s country home and gar...
Dr. Pangloss
Dr. Pangloss-ing It OverDr. Pangloss, like the majority of the main characters in Candide, symbolizes an ideology and a way of life—Voltaire is being snarkier than Stephen Colbert here. Panglossâ...
El Dorado
The Happiest Place On EarthThe 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, pr...
Syphilis
Like it or not (and when you're dealing with syphilis, most people tick the "not" box), syphilis totally functions a symbol in Candide. You might have noticed lots of references to original sin dot...
Don Isaachar
Ugly Stereotype... Of Ugly StereotypesWe don't usually defend stereotypes. About 99.99% of the time, they're gross relics of a less enlightened time, and we feel icky reading them. But in the case...