The role that each male character received in Voltaire’s satiric novel, Candide, serves to criticize the positions of men, as well as to reveal the realities and hardships that one level of society (such as aristocrats) face versus that of another (such as prisoners of war). Men play an important part in relaying this message that would fall on the deaf ears on those being condemned in the book. Having men in such crucial roles such as Cacambo, Martin, Pangloss, and Candide help to emphasize that, which helps the symbolization of traditional and non-traditional roles that must be criticized as a way for “man… [to] help his fellow-man” (4). At the beginning of the book, the narrator begins by introducing Candide, describing him as “a young
