Jenny Rosen and Ronit Langer Candide assignment

These sources taught us about Voltaire's genius and motivations while writing Candide. They also showed us how Candide was a picaresque and bildungsroman. One message Voltaire was portraying in Candide was the idea of evil, and how easily it is for society as a whole to become corrupted by that evil. This messages comes through when Voltaire satirizes all the different social and religious groups. Yet Voltaire is also telling us that we should avoid this evil and try to structure our lives in a way that fights against evil, by committing ourselves to change. The paintings put the settings into perspective and therefore made the stories clearer. Once we understood the message and clarified the story, it became clear how the book was a picaresque. At first it does not seem as though Candide is a roguish character, which is typical of the picaresque. After reading the sources we realized that it is a picaresque in the way it mocks society in a humorous way, but it is a bildungsroman for Candide. Over the course of the novel, he grow from having a purely pessimistic attitude to one of balancing the good and evils of the world.