Candide
A cheerful young man taught that all is for the best stumbles through war, earthquake, the Inquisition and slavery, until he stops arguing about the world and starts working a garden.
📖 Read the full bookThe complete public-domain novel, paired with the StoryBites version of every chapterCandide has been taught that everything happens for the best, and then the world sets out to test him. He is flogged by an army, caught in the Lisbon earthquake, whipped at an auto-da-fé and robbed on both sides of the Atlantic, while his tutor Pangloss explains why each disaster was necessary. Voltaire tells it all at a gallop, in a cool deadpan that makes the horrors funny and then not funny at all. The one perfect country Candide finds, El Dorado, is the one he chooses to leave. The ending offers no grand system, only a small farm and a famous line about a garden that readers still argue over.
What happens in Candide
Candide is a gentle young man raised in the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh’s castle in Westphalia, where the tutor Pangloss teaches that this is the best of all possible worlds. When the Baron catches him kissing his daughter Cunegonde behind a screen, he kicks Candide out. Candide is tricked into the Bulgarian army and flogged, slips away from a battle, and reaches Holland, where the kind Anabaptist James takes him in. There he meets a diseased beggar who turns out to be Pangloss, with news that Bulgarian soldiers have destroyed the castle and killed Cunegonde. James takes them by ship toward Lisbon and drowns in a storm, and the survivors reach the city just as an earthquake levels it. The Inquisition then holds an auto-da-fé, where Candide is flogged and Pangloss hanged. An old woman nurses Candide and brings him to Cunegonde, who survived and is now claimed by both a Jewish banker, Don Issachar, and the Grand Inquisitor. Candide kills both men, and the three flee to Cadiz and sail for South America, the old woman telling on the voyage how a Pope’s daughter became a servant. In Buenos Ayres the Governor wants Cunegonde, officers arrive hunting the Inquisitor’s killer, and Candide flees with his valet Cacambo to the Jesuits of Paraguay, whose commander proves to be Cunegonde’s brother. The brother refuses to let Candide marry his sister, and Candide runs him through. After nearly being eaten by the Oreillons, Candide and Cacambo reach El Dorado, a peaceful kingdom where gold is dirt. They leave anyway, with sheep laden with treasure, and lose nearly all of it. Candide sends Cacambo to ransom Cunegonde, is cheated in Surinam, and sails for France with the pessimist Martin. After being fleeced in Paris and seeing an admiral shot at Portsmouth, he waits in Venice, where he meets the wretched Paquette and Friar Giroflée and the bored Senator Pococurante. Cacambo finally appears, now a slave, and takes him to Constantinople. There Candide ransoms two galley slaves who prove to be Pangloss and the young Baron, both alive. He finds Cunegonde grown ugly and marries her anyway after the friends send her objecting brother back to the galleys. On a small farm the company grows bored and quarrelsome until an old Turk who works twenty acres shows them another way, and Candide concludes that they must cultivate their garden.
Where and when Candide happens
The castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, Westphalia
A baron’s seat whose claim to grandeur is that it has a gate and windows. Pangloss calls it the most magnificent of castles; Candide leaves it as a lost paradise, and the Bulgarians later leave not one stone upon another.
El Dorado
A hidden kingdom of the ancient Incas, walled in by mountains and reached by a river that runs under the rocks. Gold and jewels lie on the roads, everyone worships God with thanks rather than requests, and the inhabitants have vowed never to leave.
The farm on the Propontis
A small farm near Constantinople, on the Sea of Marmara, where the company settles at the end. From it they watch boats of exiled officials pass, and there they finally learn to work the land.
The 1750s
The story takes in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the war between Britain and France over Canada, and it ends in the Ottoman Empire, where officials are exiled and strangled while the farm goes on.
Chapter by chapter summary + why it matters
- 1
From the Castle to the Earthquake (Chapters I to V)
The Baron kicks Candide out of his Westphalian castle for kissing Cunegonde, and the Bulgarians trick him into their army, where he runs the gauntlet twice before their King pardons him. After a battle he reaches Holland, where the Anabaptist James feeds him and he finds Pangloss, ravaged by disease, who reports that Bulgarian soldiers have destroyed the castle and killed Cunegonde. James pays for Pangloss’s cure, which costs Pangloss only an eye and an ear, and takes them by ship toward Lisbon. James drowns in a storm while saving the sailor who struck him, and Candide and Pangloss reach the city just as the earthquake strikes.
Why it mattersEvery catastrophe is followed by Pangloss explaining why it had to happen, even that the Bay of Lisbon was made on purpose for the Anabaptist to drown in. That rhythm of disaster and cheerful explanation drives the whole satire.
- 2
The Auto-da-fé and Cunegonde (Chapters VI to X)
To prevent further earthquakes the authorities hold an auto-da-fé, where Candide is flogged and Pangloss hanged, and an old woman nurses Candide and leads him to Cunegonde, who survived her wounds. She tells how a Bulgarian captain sold her to Don Issachar and how the Grand Inquisitor forced a share in her; when each man in turn finds Candide with her, Candide kills him. Robbed of her jewels on the road, the three reach Cadiz, where Candide is made a captain in a force sailing against the Jesuits of Paraguay. On board, the old woman insists she has suffered more than Cunegonde.
Why it mattersThe auto-da-fé turns religious ritual into a public show staged to stop an earthquake, one of Voltaire’s sharpest attacks on superstition. Candide’s cry of what the other worlds must be like, if this is the best, is his sharpest doubt so far.
- 3
The Old Woman’s Tale and Paraguay (Chapters XI to XV)
The old woman tells her story: daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina, she was taken by pirates, saw her mother torn apart in Morocco, survived plague in Algiers, lost a buttock to starving Janissaries at the siege of Azof, and served in inns across Europe. In Buenos Ayres the Governor falls for Cunegonde, and when officers arrive hunting the Inquisitor’s killer, Candide flees with his valet Cacambo to the Jesuits of Paraguay. Their Commandant turns out to be Cunegonde’s brother, the young Baron, who survived the Bulgarian raid. When the Baron strikes Candide for proposing to marry his sister, Candide stabs him and escapes in his Jesuit habit.
Why it mattersThe old woman’s catalogue of horrors outdoes everyone’s, yet she admits she still loves life, a foible she calls perhaps one of our most fatal characteristics. The Baron’s pride in his sister’s seventy-two quarterings shows that no disaster cures a snob.
- 4
El Dorado and Martin (Chapters XVI to XX)
Candide shoots two monkeys chasing two girls, only to learn they were the girls’ lovers, and the Oreillons nearly eat him as a Jesuit until Cacambo talks them round. A river carries the pair into El Dorado, where children play with gold and jewels, there are no monks, no courts and no prisons, and the King lets them leave with more than a hundred sheep, fifty of them laden with gold and jewels. Most of the sheep are lost on the road; in Surinam Candide meets a maimed slave and renounces optimism, sends Cacambo to ransom Cunegonde, and is robbed by the Dutch skipper Vanderdendur. He sails for Bordeaux with Martin, a poor scholar who thinks the world has been abandoned to evil, and at sea sees the thief’s ship sunk and one red sheep saved.
Why it mattersEl Dorado is the one place where Pangloss’s claim might be true, and Candide leaves it to be rich and win Cunegonde. The Surinam slave, who tells him the price at which Europe eats sugar, drives him to renounce optimism outright, though he keeps sliding back into it whenever his luck turns.
- 5
Paris, Portsmouth and Venice (Chapters XXI to XXV)
In Paris an Abbé from Perigord takes Candide to the theater, to a card party where he loses fifty thousand francs, and into an affair with a marchioness who ends up with two of his diamonds. A letter supposedly from Cunegonde lures him to a sickbed trap, and he bribes his way out of arrest and onto a ship that stops at Portsmouth, where an admiral is shot for not coming close enough to the enemy. In Venice he waits in vain for Cacambo, meets Paquette, now a prostitute, and her Theatin friar Giroflée, both wretched beneath their gaiety. He then visits the rich Senator Pococurante, who is bored by his paintings, his music, his books and his garden.
Why it mattersMartin wins his wager about the happy-looking couple, and Pococurante shows that wealth and taste bring no happiness either. The Portsmouth scene, told in one flat paragraph, glances at the real execution of the British admiral John Byng in 1757.
- 6
Constantinople and the Garden (Chapters XXVI to XXX)
At a Carnival supper in Venice, Cacambo reappears as the slave of one of six dethroned kings and takes Candide and Martin to Constantinople, with news that Cunegonde is washing dishes on the Propontis and has grown ugly. Candide ransoms two galley slaves who are Pangloss, who survived his botched hanging, and the young Baron, who survived his wound. The friends send the Baron back to the galleys, Candide marries Cunegonde, and life on their small farm turns bored and sour until a Dervish refuses to discuss evil and an old Turk explains that work keeps away weariness, vice and want. When Pangloss links all their disasters into one chain of causes, Candide answers that they must cultivate their garden.
Why it mattersThe last chapter trades philosophy for labor, and everyone, even Friar Giroflée, finds some useful work. Pangloss still recites his system, but Candide no longer argues with it; he points to the garden instead.
Characters and how they connect
Candide
Naive hero
A gentle young man in the Baron’s castle, rumored among the old servants to be the son of the Baron’s sister. He believes whatever Pangloss teaches until war, the Inquisition, slavery and theft wear that faith down, and he ends as a farmer.
Pangloss
Tutor and optimist
The castle’s philosopher, who teaches that this is the best of all possible worlds. He loses an eye and an ear to disease, is hanged, dissected and sent to the galleys, and still refuses to give up his system.
Cunegonde
The Baron’s daughter
Seventeen, fresh-colored and plump when Candide kisses her. War, sexual violence and slavery carry her from Westphalia to Lisbon, Buenos Ayres and the Propontis; she grows ugly, holds Candide to his promise to marry her, and becomes an excellent pastry cook.
The old woman
Cunegonde’s servant
By her own account the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina, reduced to slavery and half a buttock. Shrewd and practical, she steers Cunegonde and Candide through every crisis and asks the question that sets up the ending.
Cacambo
Candide’s valet
A quarter Spaniard born in Tucuman who has been singing-boy, sacristan, sailor, monk, pedlar, soldier and lackey. Loyal and quick-witted, he talks the Oreillons out of eating them and keeps faith with Candide even as a slave.
Martin
Pessimist philosopher
A poor scholar who worked ten years for the booksellers of Amsterdam, picked by Candide from a crowd of unhappy men in Surinam, though the narrator admits the others were at least as wretched. A self-declared Manichean, he believes God has abandoned the world to some malignant being, and events keep supporting him.
The young Baron
Cunegonde’s brother
Believed killed by the Bulgarians, he turns up as a Jesuit colonel in Paraguay. Candide stabs him, but he survives to row in a Turkish galley, and he never stops objecting to his sister marrying a man without quarterings.
James the Anabaptist
Dutch benefactor
A generous man who had never been christened, who feeds Candide in Holland, pays for Pangloss’s cure and takes them toward Lisbon. He drowns saving a sailor who then lets him die, while Pangloss explains why it was for the best.
Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them
Love / marriage
Rivalry / conflict
Duty / service
Friendship / ally
Connection
Themes in Candide what the novel is really about
Optimism on trial
Pangloss teaches that all is for the best and that every effect has a sufficient reason. Voltaire tests that claim against war, disease, earthquake and torture, and each explanation sounds more absurd than the last. In Surinam Candide defines optimism as the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.
Natural and human evil
The book sets disasters no one causes, such as the storm and the Lisbon earthquake, beside cruelty people choose, such as war, the Inquisition and slavery. James the Anabaptist says men were not born wolves but have become wolves, and Martin keeps pointing to the harm people do to one another.
Religion without charity
Nearly every churchman in the book is a hypocrite: the Dutch orator who preaches charity and drives off a beggar, the Grand Inquisitor who keeps Cunegonde, the Jesuits who make war, the Grey Friar who steals her jewels. The kindest people are an Anabaptist and a Muslim farmer, and in El Dorado, where everyone is a priest, no one is persecuted. The satire also leans on crude stereotypes of Jews and Africans common in its day, which modern readers weigh against its attack on intolerance.
The search for happiness
Candide keeps believing happiness lies ahead, in the New World, in El Dorado’s riches, in Cunegonde’s arms. Every stop disproves it: the Venetian lovers are miserable, Pococurante is bored by everything he owns, and the rich Candide is no happier than Paquette. The one happy country is the one he leaves.
Work and the garden
The old Turk says his labor keeps away three great evils, weariness, vice and want, and the friends finally copy him. Martin calls working without disputing the only way to render life tolerable. Readers disagree whether the garden is modest wisdom, a retreat from the world, or a call to practical improvement.
Symbols & motifs
The castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh
Candide leaves it as a terrestrial paradise, and Pangloss holds it up as proof that this is the best of worlds. It stands for the small, comfortable world in which optimism is easy; war flattens it, and El Dorado makes it look like nothing.
El Dorado’s gold
Children play quoits with gold and jewels, and the people call them pebbles and yellow clay. Treasure that is worthless where it is common makes Europe’s greed look absurd, and it drains away as soon as Candide carries it out.
The red sheep
Candide leaves El Dorado with more than a hundred and loses them all, the last two to a thieving skipper, but a sea battle returns one to him. They carry his fortune and his hopes, and the last one ends up at the Bordeaux Academy, which sets a prize question on why its wool is red.
The garden
The small plot the friends farm together at the end. It stands for limited, practical work in place of grand explanations, though exactly what it means is left open.
Recurring motifs
Back from the dead. Cunegonde, Pangloss and the young Baron are all believed dead and all turn up alive. The reunions parody the lucky coincidences of adventure stories and mock Pangloss’s neat chains of cause and effect.
Tales of misfortune. The old woman bets that every passenger has cursed his life, Candide holds a contest for the unhappiest man in Surinam, and Paquette, Giroflée and six dethroned kings tell their stories. Almost no one in the book turns out to be happy.
Philosophical jargon. Pangloss talks of sufficient reason, cause and effect and pre-established harmony. The narrator borrows the terms in the middle of massacres, as when the bayonet is called a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands.
Important quotes
“Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best.”
“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
“This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe.”
“in this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others.”
“our labour preserves us from three great evils—weariness, vice, and want.”
“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”
The ending of Candide, explained
The last chapter opens with a wedding almost nobody wants. At the bottom of his heart Candide no longer wishes to marry Cunegonde, but her brother’s insolence and her own insistence push him to it, and the Baron is quietly handed back to the galley captain. Candide has lost his El Dorado fortune to swindlers and owns only a small farm. The friends are safe, fed and together at last, and they are miserable: Cunegonde grows uglier and more peevish, Cacambo curses his labor, and the talkers dispute metaphysics. Pangloss admits he has always suffered horribly and keeps asserting his optimism though he no longer believes it. The old woman asks whether all their past horrors are worse than staying here with nothing to do, and Candide answers only that it is a great question. Two visits change them. A famous Dervish, asked why evil exists, compares people to the mice on a ship his highness sends to Egypt and shuts the door in their faces. An old Turk who has never learned the name of any Mufti or Vizier shares the fruits of his twenty acres and says work keeps away weariness, vice and want. Candide concludes that we must cultivate our garden, and the household sets to work: Cunegonde bakes, Paquette embroiders, and Giroflée becomes a good joiner and an honest man. When Pangloss again links all their disasters into a chain that led here, Candide agrees that all that is very well, but says they must cultivate their garden. The ending is famous because it refuses to say more. Some readers take the garden as quiet wisdom: stop hunting for a system that explains suffering and do the useful work in front of you. Others see a retreat, a small group shutting out a world where heads are still impaled. Still others read it as a call to practical improvement, the kind of useful work Enlightenment writers prized over abstract systems. What is clear is that Pangloss is not refuted so much as ignored.
Common misreadings
MythPangloss dies when the Inquisition hangs him.
ActuallyCandide sees him hanged in Chapter VI, but the wet, badly tied rope fails to kill him. A surgeon who buys the body starts to dissect him, he screams, and he turns up alive as a galley slave in Chapter XXVII. Cunegonde and her brother also come back from apparent death.
MythCandide ends up agreeing with Martin that life is hopeless.
ActuallyWhen Martin concludes that people are born to live in distracting inquietude or lethargic disgust, Candide does not quite agree and affirms nothing. The ending sets aside both Pangloss’s optimism and Martin’s despair in favor of work.
MythPangloss’s philosophy is exactly what Leibniz taught.
ActuallyPangloss is a caricature. Leibniz’s Theodicy (1710) argued that God chose the best of all possible worlds, one that contains evil because any alternative would be worse overall. Voltaire mocks the way such thinking explained away real suffering, and gives Pangloss nonsense such as noses made to bear spectacles.
Test yourself
1. Why does the Baron drive Candide out of the castle?
In Chapter I Cunegonde drops her handkerchief, Candide picks it up, and their lips meet behind a screen. The Baron sees them and chases Candide out with great kicks on the backside.
2. According to the University of Coimbra, what will keep the earth from quaking?
Chapter VI explains that the university had decided an auto-da-fé was an infallible way to stop earthquakes. The same day, the earth shakes again.
3. What surprises Candide about the children in the first village of El Dorado?
The quoits are gold, emeralds and rubies, and the schoolmaster smiles and throws them down when Candide tries to return them.
4. Whom does Candide choose to sail with him from Surinam to Bordeaux?
Candide offers a free passage to the most unhappy man he can find and picks Martin, robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, deserted by his daughter and persecuted by the preachers.
5. What three evils does the old Turk say his work keeps away?
He tells Candide in Chapter XXX that he and his children cultivate twenty acres, and their labor preserves them from weariness, vice and want.
Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know
Nice work.
Candide is a kind young man who grows up in a castle in Germany. His teacher, Pangloss, tells him that everything that happens is for the best. Then Candide is thrown out for kissing the Baron’s daughter, Cunegonde, and terrible things keep happening to him: wars, an earthquake, robbers and cruel people in charge. He even finds a perfect golden country called El Dorado, but he leaves it to go and find Cunegonde. After meeting so many unhappy people, he stops believing that everything is for the best. He settles on a small farm with his friends, and they find that working together in their garden makes life bearable.
Compare & connect the story universe
Paradise Lost
Milton’s epic tries to explain why a good God allows evil, the question Candide turns into comedy. In Chapter XXV the bored Pococurante sneers at Milton’s poem.
A Modest Proposal
Another eighteenth-century satire in which calm, reasonable language describes monstrous cruelty.
Catch-22
A comic war novel of absurd military logic and deadpan horror, much like Candide’s time among the Bulgarians.
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Another story about a perfect city and the people who leave it, asking what happiness costs.
Adaptations. Candide (1956, Comic operetta by Leonard Bernstein).
Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper
💬 Discussion questions
- What does let us cultivate our garden mean in Candide
- What is Voltaire satirizing in Candide
- What does Pangloss mean by the best of all possible worlds
- How does Candide explore the theme of optimism on trial?
- How does Candide explore the theme of natural and human evil?
- What is the central conflict in Candide, and how does it shape the ending?
✎ Essay prompts
- Analyze how Voltaire develops the theme of optimism on trial in Candide. Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
- Examine the significance of the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh in Candide. What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
- How does Voltaire use deadpan irony to shape the reader’s experience of Candide?
- Some readers assume that pangloss dies when the Inquisition hangs him. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.
Key questions students ask
- What does let us cultivate our garden mean in Candide
- What is Voltaire satirizing in Candide
- What does Pangloss mean by the best of all possible worlds
- What is the significance of El Dorado in Candide
- Why does the Lisbon earthquake matter in Candide
- What happens to Cunegonde at the end of Candide
Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The text and the quotations follow Voltaire’s Candide (1759) in the anonymous English translation printed in the Modern Library edition (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918), which reprints a London translation of 1898, checked against the page images. The edition does not name the translator. The novella and this translation are in the public domain.