Guest Blogger: Katie G.

Well now, Candide.
I happened to get sick on the day of the symposium so maybe someone has already mentioned this before but...

The strangely similar...
New world vs. Old world
-it seems like these two places have exactly the same problems!
-Nothing really changed for Candide (his crimes followed him)
-Candide's life still sucked and so did everyone else's life (Even in Eldorado Candide was unhappy)
It was nice how the people of Eldorado scoffed at the outsiders obsession with their "yellow mud" and "stones" What is so special about shiny rocks anyway!?

Now a more general idea is the ever dreadful "So what?" Why did Voltaire decide to write a novel about an impressionable guy with a crappy life? If you loved, liked or hated Candide everyone can lay blame for its creation on the fatalist ideas of Leibniz and Pope. After the disaster at Lisbon the general comforting statement to the sufferers was "Oh no no no do not feel bad or sad because you could not of done anything to stop it anyway" FATE. The idea that God was just and good did not correlate with the horrors going on and the preaching that its all in God's plan for these things to happen for Voltaire.
Candide experiences so many horrors one after another and eventually things go well for him, for a small period of time, only for things to go sour once again. It seems like the only time things do go well is when some one for free will comes along and leads Candide on the right path but he still eventually faces a new tragedy. What a happy novel! The only thing keeping this from depressing readers completely is the use of low burlesque making the horrible situations go down a little easier.
The satirical novel makes the fatalist seem ridiculous and attempts to shine a better light on free will.
This menippean style satire confused everyone at one point and if you say "nay" Please explain the butt biting monkeys cause their purpose in the novel still eludes me.


Okay so I have gotten that out of my system! How did everyones paper go? (Minus the noise...) If the noise was so much of a distraction your paper did not go well... Remember: What is, is right. That blotch on your transcript is all apart of the much bigger picture. ;)