Some questions regarding Candide, by Voltaire-- Speculate, connect, imagine!
Use details from the text, which you document with page numbers, and cite your source at the end.

1. Consider the social status of these characters: Candide, Cunegonde, her brother, Pangloss, James, Don Issachar, the Inquisitor, the Old Woman, Cacambo, the Oreillons, the slave of Vanderdendur, Vanderdendur, Martin, Giraffee, Paquette, Pococurante, the dervish, and the old man with 20 acres.

2. How would you pair these characters – parallels and contrasts?

3. How is El Dorado the center of the story? What changes for Candide there?
Do you see parallels between Amsterdam and Venice; Lisbon and Paris; the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh and the small farm at the end?

4. What happens to the sexual motivation at the end of the story?  Would you call the relationship between Candide and Cunegonde love or something else?

5. Whose view of suffering seems most true to you: that of Pangloss, James, the Old Woman, Martin, the dervish, the old man with 20 acres, Candide, or some another?  Is suffering the same as evil?  Is darkness the same as evil?

6. What are the things in El Dorado that make it possibly the best place?  Why might it seem (or why not) a place where you could find happiness?  What would your El Dorado be like?

7. Do you find the end of the story satisfying?  Do you think Voltaire intended Candide to be a spokesperson for himself at the end? 

8. Do you prefer the translation of “land” to the word “garden”?  Would you think of the garden at the end to be a symbol of withdrawal from the world, or a symbol of the whole world as our garden?

9. How might we compare the life and work of Voltaire with that of Rembrandt, especially in terms of family, “success”, goals, self-knowledge, troubles, balance, happiness, and endurance?  How might these compare with your profile person?

10. How might the process of telling stories, and listening to them, as on the boat to Buenos Aires, relate to Voltaire’s sense of the intermingling of art and life?

11. Do you think that Voltaire was a man of passion?

12. Why does Cacambo stay a slave?