Voltaire - Candide (1759), 8/10

Voltaire's Candide is one of the most interesting and entertaining pieces of satire available to modern readers. Voltaire uses a combination of humor, logic, counter-logic, and narrative playfulness to provide a very necessary and creative response to Leibnizian optimism and the philosophies of the Enlightenment. The number of literary and Biblical symbols and motifs is practically unending and quite impressive for the brevity of the story, yet Voltaire uses a brilliant combination of real historical events and literary allusions to support his attacks against optimism, the illusion of free will, human goodness, and justice. Candide's character experiences an evolution that aptly takes the reader by the hand and guides us through a philosophical maturation, adding to the text's effectiveness as a work of narrative philosophy. The treatment of characters such as Martin in contrast to Pangloss gives insight into Voltaire's thoughts, and sometimes biases, but the relatively open-ended pessimism of the story gives it further meaning outside of any narrow views that have been injected into its events by critics. It is ambiguous whether Voltaire was ultimately supporting a self-annexation from modern society founded in pessimism or a pragmatic, logical participation founded in realism, but this only contributes to the artistic merit of the fiction. The ironic use of the sufficing reason is perhaps one of the strongest examples of Voltaire's satire and the critique of deterministic optimism. The brevity of the story is, again, a strength, as one can feel the story's intentionally balanced quality, never feeling unnaturally truncated but rather appropriately concise.