Candide was naive and innocent but these are the only things
he was truly guilty of in the beginning. He was taught the world
he lived in was the best of possible worlds only to be nearly destroyed by it.
Why? Pangloss, the man who was supposed to teach and inform Candide to the best
of his ability, taught him an act considered an unforgivable crime,
something that only led to his banishment and the beginning of his suffering,.
After his banishment, he nearly had his skin flayed from his body for
"deserting" the army of another nation.
Candide, like his namesake, is innocent. He is like a child
really. Children don't understand the cruelty, suffering and corruption of the
world. This can cause them to be manipulated, abused, and suffer in an
unforgiving and challenging world. If a child imitated what he saw his teacher
do or followed the teachings of those more experienced, should he be banished?
It's pretty extreme right? This also applies to when Candide was forced to run
the gauntlet, a punishement where a line of men strike him with weapons.
He simply went for a walk and it was declared desertion. Desertion is punishable
by either execution or the gauntlet.
The people in the world Candide lives in practice their
beliefs to the most extreme. Instead of simply accepting that maybe
everyone may not have the same ideas and beliefs they do or even know of them,
they punish them with the most harsh or extreme sentences imaginable.
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