In my opinion, Candide changed his thinking by the end of the story in a way that he became less optimistic, he is still with an optimistic view, but comparing how Candide started at the beginning of the story with an optimistic view followed by the philosophy of Pangloss he became less optimistic. The mentor of Candide was Pangloss, which his philosophy of life consists of everything that is the best of all possible worlds. The logic of the philosophy of Pangloss consists in that the world was created by God, and God is the most benevolent, so the world must be the perfect world for everyone. However, Candide suffers a tremendous amount of tragedies in his life that make him has doubts the optimistic philosophy of Pangloss.
One of the points in the story that Candide started to have doubts about the philosophy of Pangloss was when he said “If this is the best of all possible worlds, what must the others be like?” (Chapter 6) At this moment, Candide started to become less optimistic because he started doubting about the philosophy of Pangloss. Moreover, the major turning point of Candide to become less optimistic was when for the first time he listened to the story of the old woman. The old woman telling her experience of the rape and slavery, “A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more.
This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet to cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? —In the countries through which I have been forced to wander, in the taverns where I have had to work, I have seen a vast number of people who hated their existence; but I never saw more than a dozen who deliberately put an end to their own misery.” (Chapter 12).
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After Candide listened to the story of the old woman, he started to have his doubts about the philosophy of Pangloss because he saw the world of the old woman was not perfect because the old woman had a lot of tragedies in her life. Also, he started to analyze the philosophy of Martin that consists of a pessimist view of the world, so this makes him doubt which philosophy to follow because he was realizing that the philosophy of Pangloss was not applying to his life. During the story, Candide stared with blind optimism because he believed that everyone’s life has to be perfect, but he ends up realizing that life is not always perfect as he thought that it was. My classmate Hannah Woods mentioned, “Candide had a blind optimism view in his life.”
This means that Candide was not realizing about the bad things about life that can happen to anyone because he believes that life has to be perfect and justice for everyone until he started experienced bad things in his life, so for this reason he became less optimistic. On the other hand, he never lost his optimistic view of life because even that he suffered a lot in the story, he found happiness in his life.
In summary, Candide changed by the end of the story in a way that he became less optimistic because at the beginning of the story he started with a blind optimistic view of life, and after he suffered all of the tragedies that he experienced he realized that life is not perfect, but he never lost his optimistic view because he found happiness at the end of the story.
