To Voltaire’s despair, many continued to believe that all will be as it will be it’s the best we’ve got, after all. Where is the order in such a world? Even nature is wreaking havoc on society, so how can we believe in the goodness of God? These are the questions that puzzled Voltaire - and spurred him into action. Picture taken by Clark Boyd, from the Penguin Deluxe Classic edition of ‘ Candide’ by Voltaire In fact, it magnified the atrocities, with some newspapers even exaggerating the death toll in Lisbon by 50,000 people for extra impact. The growing availability of mass print media made all of this seem immediate and real, no longer distant and easy to ignore.

The Seven Years’ War was at its height, Damiens had just attempted to assassinate Louis XV, and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake had shaken Europe to its core. Ĭandide is a notoriously subversive work, written against a backdrop of aimless persecution and war. Optimism is only one of Voltaire’s focal points in fact, it is far from his prime concern in this novel. He acts as a philosophical guide for Candide, albeit a very ineffectual one. Such foolishness is embodied in the character of Doctor Pangloss, who espouses Optimism at all costs. Voltaire views this as a convenient vehicle to excuse cruelty, rather than address it.

This was an attempt to explain why there can be so much evil in a world ruled by a single, benevolent deity.

Picture taken by Clark Boyd, from the Penguin Deluxe Classic edition of ‘ Candide’

Candide book