Connections

“At the court martial he was graciously permitted to choose between being flogged thirty-six times by the whole regiment or having twelve bullets in his brain.” (pg. 24) What would you choose?
I asked my mother, she said that she would prefer being flogged thirty-six times, and asked her why, she said that she just had to go through a lot of pain and then there was hope of living, of life, and that was all it mattered. I asked my dad, he said that he would also choose the flogging, I asked him why, he said because he would not give up so easily. No matter what were the odds for him to survive, he would not give up in one decision of ending the suffering or bearing more suffering for later be alive. I asked myself, and surprisingly I think I would have preferred to be shot. I asked myself why, and I think that I prefer death than humiliation, with the whipping the whole regiment would enjoy my suffering while I cried and tried to behave under the pain. I would prefer to die. My way of thought surprised me, I am not a person that gives up so easily, I usually go as far as I can to get what I want, but I would give up if it comes to war.

By the third chapter of Candide I realized that it is a novel of war, there was a portrait of a war that had just ended that reminded me of Slaughterhouse-Five, I realized that Candide was indeed an antiwar book as well. There was a kind of much more subtle mocking than in Slaughterhouse-Five, but there is, “Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony as hell itself could not rival.” (pg. 25) It is a piece of satire! It is a hyperbole, and an absurdity for Voltaire to talk about the “beauty and brilliance” of the war setting. At first sight it appears as though he actually believes so, but he doesn’t, this quote made me understand that he was not serious: “Finally, the bayonet provided ‘sufficient reason’ for the death of several thousands.” (pg. 25) Voltaire does not think that there is such thing as enough reason to kill thousands of people, if he did, he would not have used the tone he did, or the quotations. My statement is reinforced by the way the “theater of war” was described so obscene, in page 26, “Whichever way he looked, the ground was strewn with the legs, arms, and brains of dead villagers.”

I not only connected what I read from Candide with Slaughterhouse-Five, but with Epictetus. Candide was taught the theory of cause and effect by the brilliant tutor Pangloss, and he tells the only man that takes care of him in the village what his tutor had taught him, “…he told me that all is for the best in this world of ours,” (pg. 27) The Handbook of Epictetus states that, nature does not bring anything wrong, that everything that is naturally occurring that is not up to us is good, never bad. Just like Candide says. At least he had that clear.