Blind belief in optimism does not help the follower and even promotes naivety and ignorance. They both influenced Candide, who eventually realized that only hard work brings rewards and that living your life always looking forward to the future never brings fortune. Although optimism and pessimism are two contrasting views, they do not clash with each other in the story. He survived many terrible things, but he maintained the attitude that “it’s always a good idea to keep hoping” while not expecting life to get better (67). Martin represented pessimism, and he embraced the world and tried to gain lessons from it.

Not until the end of the book did Candide realize that he could have a say in his own life. The downfall of optimism, however, is that its followers struggle with making their own decisions as they tend to simply let life happen to them. According to this theory, God planned everything and everyone’s lives in the best way, and whatever happens within his plan is for the best. The philosophy of optimism appears throughout the whole story and it represents positivity and believes that the world is the best it could possibly be.

Both Pangloss and Martin influenced Candide, who maintained his optimistic ideas even through rough circumstances, only to realize in the end that life is not perfect and it’s only decent when you work to make the best of it. Throughout Candide, Voltaire explored Candide’s transformation from optimism, represented by Pangloss, to pessimistic realism, represented by Martin. Candide’s statement about the garden is partially a response to Pangloss’s optimism, but the broader meaning is simply a statement on how to live. In the end, Candide discovered that it is better to improve one’s own “garden” instead of trying to make a mark on the world. He saw and experienced slavery, war, executions, dismemberments, torture, and many other evils during his travels. After numerous adventures around the world that Pangloss had taught him were “the best of all possible worlds,” Candide gained wisdom and reanalyzed the philosophy of optimism, that whatever happens in the world is for the best (Voltaire 2).

Optimism voltaire