The World keeps Spinning Around

Since I started reading the book, I predicted that Lady Cunégdone and Candide were going to end up together. They had been separated in all the ways you can imagine, but somehow fate brought them back to each other’s arms. What most surprised me of the book was when Candide, luckily, meats once again with the Baron and Pangloss. The first time I read that paragraph I believed I had misunderstood and had to re-read it again, I couldn’t believe that they were still alive! In my opinion, this was my favorite part of the book because I didn’t expect it. I kept expecting for bad things to happen to Candide, but never that he could reunite with his most loved ones. As I came to the end of the book and finished reading the last sentence “´That´s true enough,´ said Candide; ´but we must go and work in the garden.´” (Pg. 144), I ended up having more questions. What is the hidden message?

I spent a few minutes analyzing this sentence and discovered that it fitted perfectly the book, ending the different arguments of the ideologies and philosophies that we saw throughout the book. Candide had passed through a lot and was tired of all the arguing. Pangloss was still firm with his philosophy that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” while Martin was the only realistic that accepted the ugly truth and thought “that man was created by the forces of evil and not by the forces of good.” (Pg. 92) We can see they have complete opposite perceptions, meaning that they are never going to agree on the same decisions. When they started asking Candide about his point of view, he just ignores them and tells them that they should go work on the garden. In other words saying that he no longer cares and that he just wants to keep moving on with his life. He is pretty smart because he knows that this discussion could go on for years. What Candide has learned from his journey, it’s that life goes on. No matter what happens and how many doors are slammed at your face, there’s always a way out, which probably happened for the best. With this sentence we can also see how careless Candide has become, he wants to leave everything in the past and just wait patiencly for the future. Everything is meaningless for Candide, even the fact that he traveled all around the world, became rich, was robbed and even killed innocent people for the women he loves. Why would he want to forget all of his adventurous, that not everyone can accomplish? The only thing he is sure about is that no matter what your past was, you would always have a future because the world keeps spinning around. I would had expected for Candide to be more happy and excited to see Lady Cunégdone again, why wasn't he? From my point of view I believe that he lost some interested the moment that he realized that she wasn't as pretty as before. If this was the case then it wasn't true love and he probably fought for a women he didn't really like. Could this be why he became so careless and is willing to leave everything behind?