Friday, August 16, 2013

Journal 3: Candide by Voltaire

Read Chapter 19-22 pages 216-229.  Use at least 3 quotes to support your answer.

HW: .  Martin tells Candide that Paris is “a chaos, a throng in which everyone pursues pleasure and almost no one finds it”. In what ways is this statement also true of nearly all the people we encounter in the novel? To what degree is it true of human beings generally? What are the consequences of this pursuit of pleasure? Martin believes that man is equally miserable wherever he lives and that even in cities which are free from the ravages of war, “men are more devoured by envy, cares and anxiety than all the tribulations visited upon a citadel under siege. Private griefs are crueler even than public miseries” (p. 56). Is Martin’s view more accurate than Pangloss’s, or does it simply represent the other extreme? Would you agree that “private griefs are crueler even than public miseries”?

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