CKQ+Andy

//**CANDIDE AND SATIRE**//

//**CORROBORATION**//

“...You will never marry my sister while I am alive...” (Page 89)

Despite having reestablished their amity during their peregrination, Candide and the Baron still expostulate with one another when the subject of Cunegonde’s marriage is rehashed. Their enmity eventually reaches the extent at which Candide feels compelled to consign the Baron to the imprisonment from which he had recently been extricated. This is clearly illustrative of the tenuous links between humans; despite having one another throughout their respective childhoods, neither would accede to the others demands, particularly over something so trivial. By the end of their altercation, both were fully capable of murdering the other without compunction.

“...I hold firmly to my original views...” (Page 88)

In this section, Pangloss further evinces signs of complacency. He has remained intransigent in his faith despite his recent tribulations. He had contracted syphilis earlier in the story (and had to countenance the concomitant ignominy). Subsequent to convalescing from this, he had been partially mutilated, almost executed, and callously excoriated by other characters in the story (i.e. Martin). Yet, he has retained his belief in optimism, albeit superficially. It seems as if he, too, has become skeptical, and is endeavoring to repress it either out of pride or pusillanimity.

“...I should like which is worse: to... undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered - or simply to sit here and do nothing?” (Page 91)

At several pages anterior to the end, it is evident that nearly all of the characters are disconsolate, to say the least. Despite having persevered throughout truly tumultuous times, their suffering is at its pinnacle when they should be content. When, at last, the protagonists are left in an equable environment, they covet more. This could be a testament to two human vices: avarice and our extreme susceptibility to ennui.

//**"RAYS OF HOPE"**//

“...Martin...took things as the came.” (Page 90)

Nevertheless, their are “rays of hope”, as they have been denominated. Firstly, their is the peregrination our protagonists embark upon with the intention of locating Cunegonde. There is the unanticipated serendipity, in which it is revealed that two intimate friends of Candide happen to be sojourning in the same vessel. Now, readers have become fully conversant with Voltaire’s approach towards this story. Some grievous, horrific vicissitude is surely going to befall these characters, as anterior chapters had, invariably, involved the same concatenation of incidents. But here, aside from the Baron’s ostensible demise, the absence of pulchritude upon the visage Candide had so fervently wished to behold, and the new-found melancholy of the characters, this is a relatively happy conclusion. This is further corroborated by Martin, to whom most readers will take a visceral liking. (I have conjectured that Martin could be a caricature of his creator.) His misanthropic mentality and his conversance with suffering allow for him to remain completely phlegmatic at the end.