Candide Cultivate your own garden in six easy steps
2/18/04 Andy Greene English 10a Candide paper Cultivate your garden in six easy steps The extent to which Voltaire values isolation in his novel “Candide” is somewhat unclear. Voltaire spends much of the book criticizing mind sets which are isolated from those of others, and protagonist Candide only transcends his isolation by traveling and growing. At the same time the only happy people are those of El Dorado and the main characters at the end, where Candide’s final message is to “cultivate your garden” (87), a phrase often associated with worrying about your own problems. ... At first glance, it appears the message of Candide is that isolation is the best answer. ... Almost everyone that Candide encounters in the connected sees happiness as a way of making bad things feel worse. Pangloss teaches Candide to be happy, but only by looking twisting your view of what happens to such a degree that it no longer makes sense. ... The concept of isolation is further reinforced by the end of the novel, where it seems that Candide, Cunegonde, Martin, Paquette and the old woman only get through life by shutting out the rest of the world and cultivating their own little garden. Pangloss makes a desperate attempt to try to reconnect them to the outer world, explaining to Candide that had all of the horrible losses that he took not endured place “you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.