Candide is the story of an innocent boy named Candide living in a senseless and cruel world. He is a naive young man living in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-Ten-Tronckh in Westphalia who gets caught kissing the Baron's daughter, Cunégonde, and is exiled from the castle. Candide goes on a series of unusual and often horrific adventures which take him around the world in a search for Cunégonde. Along with his teacher, Pangloss, he endures: disease, rapes, robberies, wrongful executions, and an earthquake. Pangloss struggles to find justification for the terrible things in the world, but his arguments are ridiculous. In the end, Candide and Pangloss both realize that their previous ideas on optimism are far from the truth which eventually leads them to wisdom. I believe that Candide is a result of Voltaire's reaction to optimism. He wrote this book to mock Enlightenment thinkers like Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz who believed that since God is perfect, the world he created must be perfect also. .
Throughout the entire story, Voltaire attacks the claim that "all is for the best" (Voltaire 20). He uses comical allusions to this theme to contrast with the awful things that occur throughout the novel. For example, when Candide reunites with the Pangloss, who is dying from syphilis, he asks if the Devil is at fault. Pangloss says that syphilis is necessary in the best of worlds because the line of infection leads back to a man who traveled to the New World with Columbus. If Columbus had not traveled to the New World and brought syphilis back to Europe, then Europeans would also not have enjoyed New World delicacies such as chocolate.
Voltaire also makes clear that money doesn't equal happiness using examples of this throughout the entire text. When Candide gets a fortune in Eldorado, it seems like all of his problems are coming to an end. With all the money he has he can bribe his way out of most situations.
