Candide
Voltaire (1759)
“A razor-sharp satirical attack on blind optimism, written in ten days by a man who had seen the world and found it catastrophically absurd.”
Character Analysis
His name is his character — French for 'innocent' or 'naive.' Candide is not stupid; he is experientially innocent, which is worse. He processes each new catastrophe through Pangloss's doctrine and, for most of the novel, finds a way to make it fit. His gradual disillusionment is the novel's structural arc — by the end, he does not refute Pangloss so much as he simply stops listening. The garden is not a philosophy; it is a decision to stop philosophizing.
Simple, earnest, reactive — he speaks in short questions and exclamations. His sentences get slightly more complex as the novel progresses, mirroring his experience.