Heaven In The Novel 'Candide' By Voltaire

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In the novel Candide by Voltaire, the protagonist Candide goes on an adventure to different places to search for his love, Lady Cunegonde. During his travels, he reaches El Dorado, a heaven-like place which compares to no other place in the world. Voltaire presents this utopia, El Dorado, to show how awful the other places in the world are, how it relates to heaven, and to have the opposite and itself work together to relate to the overall meaning of the work. Throughout the novel, Candide visits foreign lands in search of Lady Cunegonde. The majority of the places in the book are being ravaged by war or have no civil laws being enforced whatsoever. In places such as Holland, he is treated badly by the minister’s wife and in Lisbon a misfortune happens and James the Anabaptist is killed. Then in Spain, Candide and his followers are almost executed to rid the Spaniards of …show more content…
El Dorado is said to have streets where there are gold nuggets on the ground but the citizens do not pick them up. There is no unrest in El Dorado because everyone is respected by each other. El Dorado is Candide and Cacambo’ s heaven. They speak to a man who is one hundred and seventy-two years old and he tells them why El Dorado is so perfect. One of the reasons why El Dorado exists the way it does is because no European settlers has found it. The old man claims that war and savagery is brought to lands by foreigners so in order for there to be peace, only the people that belong in a place should live there. Voltaire recognizes and condemns the settlement of new lands where a peaceful group already lives. Voltaire creates groups like the Bulgars and the Avars to portray the likes of European settlers and native groups. The heaven that is El Dorado only exists the way it does because the citizens treat it with respect and Europeans have not discovered it and to try to take it as their
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The Essay

Theme- Prompt #2 In the novel, Candide, Voltaire demonstrates the destructive nature of self-pity. The main character, Candide, has great pity on himself. After he is kicked out of his “earthly paradise”, he is all alone for the first time. He “rais[es] his eyes to heaven” and weeps and moans over his lady love, causing him to become sick and not wanting to eat, gradually gaining his self-pity (357). He feels like he did no wrong, even though he did, and thinks he does not deserve to get…

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