Candide - Reflection

“Candide” was one of those novels that was perfect for the new headphones my sister got for me for Christmas. I hadn’t really asked for anything, so I figured I’d just see what happened. I’m a pretty laid-back guy, but I love music more than almost anything, so to be able to hear choral music and rock music with clarity of sound like what I’m currently listening to is an amazing gift.

“Candide” coincided with “Lux Aurumque”, and as I moved through the first chapters I learned of Candide, Pangloss, Cunégonde, and the Bulgars. As I read I reminisced on my first few relationships. When I was growing up – gay and in Waco, no less – to be caught kissing someone I was attracted to meant a similar alienation. I identified with Candide’s struggles – Jacques drowning, Cunégonde’s slavery, Pangloss’s hanging – all resonated with me as symbols of abandonment, betrayal, and disenchantment. I saw in Candide an overwhelming sense of myself in my adolescence: tossed and turned by the furies of the world, trying to make his own destiny, but too quickly overpowered by Fate.

My roommate, JD, walked in halfway through my reading of the novel. He asked me what I was reading, so I showed him the cover. He leaned in closer, squinted, and then nodded as though he understood. I asked if he’d read it and he shook his head. I asked if he’d heard of it and he shook his head again. I tore my headphones off my head and asked why it was so hot. He said some asshole had set the thermostat to 99 degrees.

As he left huffily to turn down the temperature to where we could feel less like we lived in the eighth circle of Hell and more like an actual college dorm room, I kept reading. “Lux” got old for me so I moved it off repeat and changed it to Eric Whitacre’s “October.” The oboes swept me up as I continued looking at Candide’s wounding of the baron and escape with Cacambo into the clutches of the Biglugs. Their discovery of Eldorado mirrored my escape into college from Waco – a sort of idyll with a longing for elsewhere. For Candide, it’s Cunégonde, for me it’s California. Anywhere that I can continue being accepted for who I am.

“October”’s soft euphonium finally rang out its last note, and I was fully unprepared for the blast of guitar that assaulted my ears. Underoath’s “It’s Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door” was now playing. It was so intense that I fell out of my chair and the book went flying. Picking myself (and the book) back up, I read of Surinam, and Vanderdendeur’s death. I chuckled at the thought of karma. It’s a nice gesture but in my opinion if karma were real I’d be a millionaire by 30.

Pangloss and the baron were revealed to be alive, and JD left the room for lunch. Candide buys their freedom and remembers his promise to marry Cunégonde, and a song about being together with a single girl forever started pumping into my ears. Only fitting; however the song in question is talking about eternal bliss, bliss that Cunégonde, Candide, and Pangloss don’t share. However, the simple life of the farmer upends this discontent and disillusionment, and the novel ends with everybody happy.

I remember closing the book and being slightly angry – Candide seemed empty, like a vessel. He just accepted Pangloss’s theories and at the very end changed to accept the farmer’s theories. Everything he did was determined by something other than himself. He’s a perfect example of Newton’s Third Law: for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Candide is the reaction to everything around him. I wondered if I do nothing but react to situations around me rather than being proactive. And then I realized if I weren’t proactive I wouldn’t be reading this book so relatively early.

Overall, I enjoyed Candide. It was fantastical at times, but mostly it served as an allegory for Voltaire’s philosophies and vision. Moving past optimism, pessimism, cynicism and realism, Candide finally finds his bliss in simple, hard work. And now my work continues in other assignments, in other worlds…