Candide at an early age is taught an optimistic view of the world which he sticks to, the rest of his life. Though, by adopting this philosophy he is exposed to a number of series of sufferings. But this philosophy helps him to survive through odds and ends, and he envisions the world as a fictitious source of hope that takes him away from the melancholy. Voltaire has presented Candide as a magnum opus that fulfils all the criteria for combating devilish accidents that occurs in his life. Moreover, Candide is influenced by positive psychological factors among which optimism and social support are the evident ones that have been shown to influence general well-being. The psychological significance of optimism is linked to positive outcomes associated with producing high self-esteem, achievement, and coping with adversity. The character sketch of Candide is an exquisite piece of optimism, that according to Fleming & Voltaire (1901, p. 209) presents the best of all possible worlds as the circumstances brought opportunities to Candide to experience all the vicissitudes of fortune to cope up with discouraging scenarios. This referred to the degree to which he not only hold positive expectancies for his future, but also believed that individuals who believe that the desired goal is unattainable remain unable to reach their goals.
Voltaire has portrayed through Candide a series of natural and human disasters. From war, rape, famine, drowning, earthquake to violence, torture, brutality, indifference, intolerance, deception, persecution, slavery, butchery, and disease, catastrophes add an inescapable journey of woes in his life, but in a timely fashion in which happiness has only appeared as a superficial moment of experience which dissolves upon questioning or in the next moment. It would be wrong to say that such human misery is avoidable through the effects of the natural evils of storms and earthquakes. On the threshold of human miseries, Voltaire has given a glimpse of contention through Candide. Critics while pointing towards the limitations of being unrealistic, suggest that Voltaire lacked a realistic opinion of the world and that evil cannot be compensated by good (Weitz, 1963, p. 7). In fact criticism lingers on the worst evil aspect of the optimistic philosophy, which apart from the philosopher Pangloss, is the believe of everyone that such burden must be thrown in order to make life tolerable.
Other critical look at Candide’s character sets him off from a realistic opinion and believes that he adopts a dramatic technique of showing the absurdity of the ‘optimistic’ doctrine. However, in order to prove the negative aspect of optimism, Voltaire has successfully meet the criteria to combat with the hardships confronted by Candide. To Candide, optimism is the key that functions as a counsel of despair, his unrealistic or fictitious opinions does not belong to any joy or hope. Neither such attitude elucidates any success or failure that could be linked to psychological absurdity, nor it demonstrates the goodness or evil. But, what it illustrates is the existence of evil that is dealt with a high moral and self-esteem. This we would prove later in the essay how self-esteem is related with optimism, but as for the good or evil is concerned, evil simply exists in many forms depicted by Voltaire and it is man’s test to cope with it. Candide dealt with devilish acts through the weapons of patience and hope. The speculation is in the form of Candide managing all these hardships through a high self-esteem and meanwhile he managed to retain his self-esteem. The philosophy behind the doctrine refers to alleviating those evils that Voltaire thinks are contingent and avoidable, man must substitute useful labor for optimism or idle speculation on the philosophical problem of evil. “Work,” says the Turkish farmer to Candide, Martin, and Pangloss, “I and my children cultivate them; our labour preserves us from three great evils weariness, vice, and want” (Voltaire, 1918, p. 166).
One may question about the prevalence of such collective substitution of honest labor over idle speculation, that could be elucidated by the argument that it is better to work than to philosophize about insoluble problems. In other words, it is better to be realistic than to be optimistic. But the question is would such realistic approach help to eliminate evil? If we consider for a short while that the Turkish farmer is right, work can eliminate one dimension of evil, i.e, boredom. Wisdom and poverty has nothing to do with the elimination of evil. But, it is unable to alleviate other forms of evil like war, earthquakes, and so on. So, it is hard to handle all the consequences of evil through optimistic approach and require high self-esteem.
The psychological aspect of Candide’s optimism reveals his dispositional tendency to hold generalized positive expectancies even in the face of destruction. These generalized expectancies when applied to Candide’s life domain provides a simple but effective approach to understand creative measures that are beneficial directly to the extent where individuals like Candide (though rare) believe their future outcomes will be good. This gives us a clear symbol of hope to expect that good outcomes will occur even when one is confronted with major obstacles. The disasters confronted by Candide never remained able to capture Candide’s attention and such courage depicted by Valtaire reveals his systematic tendency related with self-esteem to cope up with stress. An optimistic attitude towards life tends to have a positive view of goal-fulfilling expectations which in turn affects the motivation factor by raising the moral and the amount of effort made to fulfill these expectations. Optimism is the second name that could be given to a positive psychology to perceive as a motivational aspect of future expectations that may influence both the types of goals individuals set and the enthusiasm they have for fulfilling these expectations.
Optimism possess a moderating effect by demonstrating the level of courage in people in handling new or difficult situations. Hardships brings positive emotional reactions and boosts hope to optimists, as they expect to have positive outcomes even when things are difficult; they tend to take an attitude of confidence and persistence. Optimistic people tend to assume that tough time can be successfully handled in one way or another and they are more likely to employ active and problem-focused coping strategies than avoidance or withdrawal. Positive psychology advices that among one of the problem solving approaches is to adopt an optimistic attitude against every difficulty you face. On the other hand, rest of the characters in Candide hold pessimistic personalities, and remain unable to combat with hardships. This also reveals their failure in paving way to hope.
Voltaire has shown in his novel optimism as a key that helped Candide to survive through difficulties, otherwise he would have remained unable to cope up with the catastrophes. This, in Voltaire’s opinion must not be negated or avoided in order to lead a positive life. The highly optimistic approach of Candide reveals a high self-esteem because scientists have discovered self-esteem to be one of those few dimensions of human behavior that stretches across the full spectrum of human existence. For instance lower self-esteem brings pessimistic approach and negativity is often mentioned in regard to various mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety. Lack of self-esteem is also found in most of the common problems of living that include difficulties dealing with failures and losses at a personal level and other setbacks indicated in Candide.
In the light of the above facts, if we want to prove Candide’s personality, we will consider to characterize his self-esteem in context with a certain attitude. An attitude toward a given object is free to uphold any positive or negative emotional and behavioral reactions. Self-esteem based on the idea of a discrepancy is the difference between the self that one wishes to be (the ideal self) and the self that one currently sees oneself as being (real or perceived). The closer these two percepts are, the higher is the self esteem which we can see in Candide’s case. Whereas the wider the gap between the two, the more self-esteem suffers, as in the case of other characters in Candide.
Consistent with the stress and coping suffered by Candide, it is clear that stress can lead to positive outcomes in the long run, whether one examines this phenomenon in psychosocial or philosophical processes, in childhood or adulthood. But there needs to be a balance in the achievement of gains and losses which indicates that it is not surprising that the developmental effects of trauma also manifests this pattern. Candide, though remained unable to maintain a balance in his failures and losses, but adopted a personal combating approach in which he ultimately defeated his problems of life.
Work Cited
Fleming F. William & Voltaire. The Works of Voltaire: A Contemporary Version [Introduction; Candide; Political Dissertations]. Volume: 1 : E. R. DuMont: Paris. 1901.
Voltaire. Candide. 1918.
Weitz Morris. Philosophy in Literature: Shakespeare, Voltaire, Tolstoy & Proust: Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1963.