What is the meaning of life? Can mankind find genuine serenity or contentment on Earth? Voltaire’s work begs these questions at every point in the story of Candide. Through the extensive and outlandish life story of the protagonist, Voltaire addresses many eighteenth-century ideas, including optimism, rationalism, and general skepticism. While it is difficult to extract Voltaire’s personal voice and opinion from the text, his fame in the Enlightenment makes evident that many of the skeptical, critical thoughts within the work are his own. Voltaire is known for questioning morality, happiness, and especially socially-constructed institutions such as religion and government. In his book, Candide, he portrays these questions through clever narratives, providing the audience with intense imagery to aid in the process of comprehending such revolutionary ideas of the time. After taking the audience through the remarkable life of Candide, Voltaire hardly ends the story with a conclusion. His conclusion in and of itself turns out to be a question unanswered—what is better in life, to suffer or to do nothing? Ultimately, Voltaire asks, what is the conclusion of life itself? It appears that the story of Candide emulates, to a subtle extent, King Solomon’s pursuit of purpose and contentment, which he documented in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon concludes his findings with the statement, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor” (Ecclesiastes 2:24). Similarly, Voltaire closes his disruptive story with the inconclusive statement “But we must cultivate our garden” (Voltaire, 119). While a decisive conclusion is absent in Candide, it is clear that Voltaire desires to present his audience with the idea that perhaps contentment comes in a simpler manner than most beliefs would present at the time, that Eden—the ideal place of contentment—can be cultivated wherever one happens to be in life.
Replete within the pages of Candide is the concept of Eden. The Garden of Eden is the epitome of perfection, contentment and happiness in life. At the beginning of the novel, the childhood character of Candide knows this place simply as the way life has always been. He did not cultivate it, discover it, or receive it from anyone’s hand. He was merely born into it and knew nothing else. When Candide is expelled from his first taste of Eden—banished from the castle in which he grew up for a minor misbehavior—the quest to rediscover its beauty begins in his life, and he instantly becomes a slave to the allure of finding contentment and happiness once more. “Driven from terrestrial paradise, [he] walked a long while without knowing where, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven…” (41). By raising his eyes to heaven, he suggests that such a quest is, in reality, impossible for mortal man. Further in the book, Candide stumbles upon another Eden in the image of El Dorado, but he leaves it on his own accord; “The two happy men resolved to be happy no longer, but to ask his Majesty for permission to leave” (Voltaire, 79). Finding no contentment in the face of happiness itself, Candide points to Solomon’s discoveries of the same—that every pursuit is indeed vanity in life on Earth.
Toward the end of the novel, after having experienced and possessed every desire for which he had ever yearned, Candide still demonstrates discontentment. Settling down on a farm to begin a quiet life, his emptiness remains equally as prevalent as in his greatest moments of suffering; again reiterating Solomon’s call to humanity that all is vanity on Earth. Joining in his disappointment, the old woman asks the profound question, “I want to know which is worse…to go through all the miseries we have undergone, or to stay here and have nothing to do?” (116). Here, the old woman speaks to the process of seeking out Eden, which is generally characterized by the pain and suffering involved in not yet having arrived. However, even upon arrival at that which appears to offer happiness there is discontentment; which ultimately begs the question, “what is the purpose and conclusion of it all?” Looking back at Candide’s first gesture after having been expelled from Eden, it appears that the author hints that Eden on Earth is impossible. The only action man can take toward contentment is to attempt his own creation of it. This parallels Solomon’s words exactly: “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccl. 1:14). Whether suffering, or doing nothing, so long as it takes place under the earthly sun, it is vain and worthless.
Voltaire then shifts the mood of the text, offering Candide’s first genuinely hopeful discovery through the idea of cultivation. Candide states, “we must cultivate our garden,” implying that contentment, Eden itself, or at least a close competitor to it, can be created on Earth and in the lives of mankind through the determination to cultivate it. As Pangloss explains, man was placed in Eden to tend it and to labor within it. Why then, would the process be any different on Earth? Solomon speaks to this as well by saying, “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor” (Eccl. 2:24). He further states that this ability to cultivate enjoyment is a gift from God. “For without Him, who can find enjoyment?” (Eccl. 2:25). While Voltaire does not directly conclude his work with an answer to all the questions he poses within the pages of the novel, he does leave the audience with hopeful advice, directly relating to the pages of Ecclesiastes—to cultivate one’s own Eden; one’s own contentment.
There is a popular conception of choosing happiness that circulates western societies today. While happy circumstances cannot always be selected, man’s response to each circumstance indeed can. Voltaire makes this understanding evident with his final depiction of Eden—one personally cultivated by Candide himself. One which the characters work with all their might to attain; and one that they choose with all their hearts to accept. At the end of the book, Pangloss presents Candide with a series of reminiscent thoughts, explaining that had circumstances not happened as they did, they would not have arrived where they were. Candide responds to these thoughts as Solomon would have as well—“That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden” (119). Candide arrives at the end of his impossible journey with the understanding that Eden itself is not attainable by mortal hands, but only divine gifting. All man can do is work to make his garden as beautiful as possible, and enjoy what he has. The allusion to Solomon’s work from the text of Candide is evident in the skepticism of the optimistic mindset. Solomon, too, does not believe that the world is the best of possible worlds, but that it is still a gift from God, entrusted to the care of mankind, and to his enjoyment. This also, it appears, to Voltaire, is the path to contentment, and the ultimate doorway to Eden on Earth.
September 5, 2018
Works Cited:
Voltaire. Candide. Translated by Daniel Gordon. Bedford, St. Martin’s, 2016.
Ryrie Study Bible. Ecclesiastes. King James Version, Moody Publishers, 1994.