How Does Voltaire Use Satire In Candide

Voltaire was a philosopher in the 17th century. Voltaire’s main purpose for writing the novel Candide was to get rid of the optimism theories. Voltaire wrote this during the 17th century enlightenment era when all these new ideologies and societies were changing their ways of thinking. The satire and exaggeration helped show that the theory of optimism should be demolished. Voltaire’s satire and irony was aimed at the philosophical optimism along with religion, political systems, and war. He uses hyperboles, euphemisms, and irony to satirize these subjects. Voltaire valued the theory of pessimism over the theory of optimism. He used satire in a way that showed his humor and intelligence in the subjects. He used satire in a way to not necessarily demolish the optimism …show more content…
One example of this is Pangloss doesn’t let Candide save James from drowning because he thinks it is supposed to happen. Optimistic philosophies thought about things like since god is perfect the world he created must also be perfect, pessimistic philosophies thought about things like since there is evil there is either no god or he is not as powerful as the optimistic thinkers thought him to be. Voltaire satirized the optimistic thinkers to basically show them his side of the story while poking fun at how they thought about things. Candide and Pangloss were the optimists in the book. They then went though many hardships and evils. Pangloss had trouble trying to come up with the reason things were happen and his solutions were absolutely insane, one example is when he got syphilis, he concluded that it should be spread in order for everyone to enjoy it. Voltaire made the more intelligent characters he ones who were pessimists for that’s exactly as he believed. Even by the end Pangloss was basically forced to change his views and be a pessimist because not even himself could believe