Candide and Fredrick Douglas: Voltaire’s Candide

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Candide and Fredrick Douglas
Voltaire’s Candide
Voltaire’s Candide and Fredrick Douglas’s narrative describe the struggles of two young men with the desire to conquer their current problems for a better future. Candide focuses on attaining simple material wealth that he can eventually enjoy without all the distractions he has experienced. On the other hand, Douglas battles slavery under control of various masters until he finally learns to read and write, skills that help him to write his encounter to motivate other people going through similar experiences to keep on hoping for their freedom. Candide and Douglas endure difficult situations and challenges until they both succeed in attaining wealth and freedom respectively.
Voltaire describes Candide’s hard life throughout his work. The novel incarnates science, religion, philosophy, literature and government to show the varying hard encounters experienced by Candide in his desire to achieve a better life. Together with his companions, they endure challenges but do not give their dreams. Candide’s reflections show the social ills happening in his society. The satiric narration reveals the actions through Candide’s life experience since they were an order of the day in the described community. First, Candide is ejected from the magnificent castle he had grown by his teacher Pangloss for schooling (Voltaire, 2). He was still young and naive at this time. Besides, he could have opposed the idea if he knew what would happen after the ejection. Candide was brought up in a decent life and the following unfolding of events after leaving the castle were not pleasant for him. The satire in the novel brings readers down to the disasters and hardships experienced by Candide and his companions during their travel.
One of the most striking issues is that Candide and his companions were raped during the journey. Easy to say but possibly hard to endure. This experience could have pushed him to giving up but his desire to achieve a better life for himself kept him moving. Also, he met a harsh encounter with the Bulgarians. Although they pretended to be of good will at first, they did not have pure intentions with him. They intended to make him one of their own through a hard way of enduring difficult training which anyone could term as maltreatment (Voltaire, 6). He was taken to a regiment where the exercise for the Bulgarians would always take place. According to Voltaire (7), “there he was made to wheel about to the right, and to the left, to draw his rammer, to return his rammer, to present, to fire, to march, and they gave him thirty blows with a cudgel.” These exercises were literally hard but Candide persevered until he was able to escape from the Bulgarians.
In another occasion, Candide, doctor Pangloss and James the Anabaptist were met with a tempest earthquake in a ship. The tremendous shipwreck led to phase of distinct fear among half of the passengers since half of the rest were not even sensible of the danger before them (Voltaire,19). The vessel gaped with rent sheets and broken masts but half of the conscious team prayed. They managed to escape the danger alive and still continued with ...