Bad Stereotypes In Voltaire's Candide

Voltaire’s Candide is something that we can look at today and notice how the people that are around Candide fall into a stereotype. The main people that will be looked at is Pangloss, Cunegonde, Paquette, and Martin. Stereotypes are can be both good and bad. Most of the people in Candide however seem to only reflect the bad stereotypes in my opinion. Yet because of some of the things that they have been through can make it very understandable why they are the way they are. Cunegonde is seventeen years old. She is the Baron’s daughter and is presumed to be beautiful. She is also very strong as well as sturdy. Through everything that she has been through such as rape, slavery, and disembowelment, she loses her beautiful appearance. Cunegonde also appears almost love sick for Candide. She wants to marry him desperately. She is not very intelligent. “She met Candide on reaching the castle and blushes; Candide blushed also…” (Candide, pg 5) A stereotype that she reflects would be that girls are always boy crazed. Everyone thinks that a girl is obsessed with boys, and that is all that she can think about. Cunegonde is severely in love with Candide, so it is easy to see her …show more content…
They represent a great deal of how we look at people today. We don’t always see people for who they really are, but for what they did or what happened to them. Martin’s character has also taught that people need to learn to open their eyes on the world instead of just seeing what is bad even though there may be a lot of it. People always need to be grateful, and Pangloss was a counterpart to the negativity since he always looked for the best. Stereotyping isn’t something that needs to be done, it is something that needs to go away. These characters would be viewed horribly in today’s society, and that should teach everyone that we need to work on fixing that. You have to give everyone a chance before you judge