Summary: Chapter 10
A Franciscan friar steals Cunégonde’s jewels.
Despite his agreement with Pangloss’s philosophy that “the fruits
of the earth are a common heritage of all,” Candide nonetheless
laments the loss. Candide and Cunégonde sell one horse and travel
to Cadiz, where they find troops preparing to sail to the New World.
Paraguayan Jesuit priests have incited an Indian tribe to rebel
against the kings of Spain and Portugal. Candide demonstrates his
military experience to the general, who promptly makes him a captain.
Candide takes Cunégonde, the old woman, and the horses with him,
and predicts that it is the New World that will prove to be the
best of all possible worlds. But Cunégonde claims to have suffered
so much that she has almost lost all hope. The old woman admonishes
Cunégonde for complaining because Cunégonde has not suffered as
much as she has.
Analysis: Chapters 5–10
Readers have proposed various interpretations of Jacques’s
death. His death could represent Voltaire’s criticism of the optimistic
belief that evil is always balanced by good. Jacques, who is good,
perishes while saving the sailor, who is selfish and evil; the result
is not a balance but a case of evil surviving good. Jacques’s death
could also represent the uselessness of Christian values. Continually
referred to as “the Anabaptist,” Jacques is an altruist who does
not change society for the better; he ends up a victim of his own
altruism.
Pangloss responds to Jacques’s death by asserting that
the bay outside Lisbon had been formed “expressly for this Anabaptist
to drown in.” This argument is a parody of the complacent reasoning of
optimistic philosophers. Convinced that the world God created must
necessarily be perfectly planned and executed, optimists end up
drawing far-fetched and unlikely connections between apparently
unrelated events, such as the formation of a bay and the drowning
of Jacques.
Voltaire bases the earthquake in Candide on
an actual historical event that affected him deeply. A devastating
earthquake on November 1, 1755—All Saints’
Day—leveled Lisbon and killed over 30,000 people,
many of whom died while praying in church. The earthquake challenged
a number of Enlightenment thinkers’ optimistic views of the world.
The sailor’s debauchery amid the groans of the wounded
represents indifference in the face of evil. Voltaire strongly condemned indifference,
and his belief that human inaction allows suffering to continue
is evident in his depictions of the sailor and Pangloss. At one
point, when Candide is knocked down by rubble and begs Pangloss
to bring him wine and oil, Pangloss ignores Candide’s request and
rambles on about the causes and ultimate purpose of the earthquake.
Voltaire proposes a fundamental similarity between Pangloss’s behavior
and the sailor’s actions. The sailor’s sensual indulgence in the
face of death is grotesque and inhumane. While less grotesque, Pangloss’s
philosophizing is no better, because it too gets in the way of any
meaningful, useful response to the disaster.
The auto-da-fé, or act of faith, was the Inquisition’s
practice of burning heretics alive. Beginning in the Middle Ages,
the officials of the Inquisition systematically tortured and murdered
tens of thousands of people on the slightest suspicion of heresy
against orthodox Christian doctrine. Jews, Protestants, Muslims,
and accused witches were victims of this organized campaign of violence.
Like many Enlightenment intellectuals, Voltaire was appalled by
the barbarism and superstition of the Inquisition, and by the religious
fervor that inspired it.
