Essay on Monomyth for Candide

Joshua Stokes

Essay on Monomyth for Candide

World Foundations II (201:10)

December 6, 2018  

Candide is a satire filled with sarcasm and extremes in order to express opinions and teach the reader.  Though this is not a typical monomythic story, there are enough elements of it as we follow Candide’s mishaps and adventures and watch his beliefs and reality clash as he slowly learns, to some extent, to value what he has and those close to him.  Candide eventually learns that the best of all possible worlds isn’t someplace but rather what we make of our own lives where ever we may be.  

Stage One: Departure  

The ordinary world Candide starts off in is Westphalia, or to be more specific, at Baron’s Thunder-ten-Tronckh’s estate.  His mentor at this time is Dr. Pangloss, a professor and philosopher who thoroughly and completely has Candide believing that this is “the best of all possible worlds”(1) regardless of what we may initially think.  Candide enjoys his life here and the people in it, for example, Cunégonde, which gets him into an unfortunate situation when “Baron’s Thunder-ten-Tronckh passed near the screen and beholding this cause and effect chased Candide from the castle with great kicks on the backside.”  Unfortunately, through this somewhat naive act, Candide finds himself thrust from this world into another, largely unfamiliar world, unprepared to meet it.  

1. (Candide, Ch. 1)  

Stage Two: The Initiation

Throughout the majority of the remainder of the book, Candide experiences a series of trials and events that try his beliefs and change his perspectives.  At first it is his trials among the Bulgars that his naive nature nearly gets him killed, but it is through sheer grace that the king of the Bulgarians passed by and learned of the crimes of Candide, “he understood from all that he learnt of Candide that he was a young metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world, and he accorded him his pardon.”(2)  These events continue in succession with seemingly no rest for Candide as one tragedy or wrong befell him and his fellow travelers, including Dr. Pangloss who is eventually hanged.