Voltaire's Encyclopdia

            Candide undoubtedly provokes such a wide range of reactions and interpretations amongst its readers.  I guess this characteristic is true for many great works of literature, but there is something unique about Candide. For me, the most unique quality of Candide is the amount of ideas it introduces.  Voltaire presents the reader with an encyclopedia-like novella, bringing up ideas and often dropping them in the next sentence.  I find it difficult to even write a reaction paper because Candide never spent long enough on a single topic for me to develop much of a reaction at all.  

This is not to say that I didn’t somewhat enjoy reading Candide.  You see, I was the weird type of kid (and still am) that enjoyed reading encyclopedias more than regular books.  My curiosity is satisfied by understanding many topics at a superficial level rather than a few topics in depth. For this reason, Voltaire’s style of writing did resonate with me.  It was great to explore different ideas, such as a moneyless utopian society or the evils of war, without ever fully developing an understanding or opinion on them.  I would even suggest that the greatest and most distinguishing characteristic of Voltaire lies in his ability to present the reader with various controversial topics without ever giving the reader a chance to develop an opinion regarding the matter.

I tried to keep the class’s theme of “coming of age” in mind while reading Candide.  I noticed that Voltaire’s encyclopedia like style of writing parallels many features of one’s own coming of age experience. Let me try and summarize most people’s coming of age experience with a few generalizations.  In a very short period of time (only a few decades), we humans are introduced to the entire world, its history, and its future problems. We go to school for a few years, read a couple of books, and with the wave of a magic wand we are expected to understand the world, or at least form an opinion about it.  It all seems like madness. It is no shock that Candide’s journey was madness.

Voltaire ends the story with a dull and unsatisfying ending.  As the reader, there is a natural desire to see the protagonist figure everything out and live happily ever after. Alas, Candide does not figure everything out and only lives happily ever after by a stretch of the term.  It seems evident that Voltaire was trying to convey the message that in the end, it is ridiculous for us to figure out the big picture.  Martin concludes that humans should “work without speculating”.  Is this really the fate of man?  Voltaire ironically does a great job at leaving me to speculate.