75 pages • 2 hours read
VoltaireCandide
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1759A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Cacambo and Candide cross “deep into unknown country” (39) escaping the Jesuits. They rest and Cacambo encourages Candide to eat, which he protests at first claiming he is too distraught, though he eats nonetheless. That night they hear women’s cries and follow them to find two naked girls skipping across a meadow being chased by “a pair of apes snapping at their bottoms” (39). Candide kills both apes with his rifle, thinking he is helping the women, but the girls begin to wail and cradle the apes. Cacambo explains that the apes were their lovers, as is customary in other parts of the world, and Candide understands by recalling Pangloss’ lessons on cross-species couplings producing “aigypans, fauns and satyrs” (40). They leave immediately to avoid trouble, have dinner in the woods, and fall asleep.
When they awake, they have been captured by the Oreillon tribe, who are naked, armed with “arrows, clubs and flint axes” (40) and chanting “Let’s eat Jesuit!” (41). Cacambo speaks their language and explains that while it is normal to eat enemies, it is not good to eat your friends, informing them that Candide has just killed Jesuit. He encourages them to take the cassock they stole from the Baron to the nearest border post to verify their story. The Oreillons do so and ultimately free the two men, treating them “with every civility” (42) before returning them to the border. Candide is ultimately content to have killed Cunégonde’s brother because killing a Jesuit secured their freedom.
Chapter 17 Summary
Cacambo advises Candide they should return to Europe immediately because the new world is no better, however Candide cannot return to his own country or Portugal without facing violence or execution, and he does not want to leave Cunégonde behind. They head towards Cayenne to find Frenchmen to help them, but they get lost and wander; their horses die of fatigue, their provisions run out, and they must survive on wild fruit. They find a boat on a river and ride it downstream, putting their trust in “Providence” (43). They travel for days through mountains and tunnels. Their boat is destroyed on rocks so they cross boulders to a plain that has been perfectly cultivated, where they encounter “carriages lustrous in form and substance” (43) drawn by large red sheep, “bearing men and women of singular beauty” (43). They have arrived in Eldorado. At the first village they witness children playing with gold and jewels; Cacambo and Candide assume the children are royalty.
The children abandon the jewels as they go into their schoolhouse, and the two observers return the jewels to the school master, who drops them on the ground, confused by the gesture. The men are amazed at the size and grandeur of the smallest homes, and they enter a crowded inn where they enjoy an elaborate feast. Cacambo translates their Peruvian dialect as they speak politely with the locals. When they go to pay, the innkeeper and his wife have a good laugh, explaining their meal was free as the inns are subsidized by the government to promote trade. They refuse to accept jewels, or “the pebbles off our roadside” (45), as payment. Candide and Cacambo are both bewildered by this country that is so different from Westphalia.
Chapter 18 Summary
They are taken to a wise, 172-year-old man, who explains they live in the ancient homeland of the Incas, who left to fight the Spanish and were wiped out. Those who stayed behind preserved their isolation, and thus their peace and happiness. The land was called El Dorado by the Spanish, who came close to finding them but are blocked by inaccessible mountains. Candide is delighted to discover they have a religion with one god but no monks. They are then sent to the court, where they are bathed and dressed to meet the King, who they greet with a hug and kiss on both cheeks, as is the custom. They are invited to supper by the King but explore the city, which is beautiful and impressive, with towering buildings and advanced scientific technology. At dinner, they dine with the King who, to their astonishment, is truly witty. They spend a month in Eldorado, but Candide begins to miss Cunégonde, reasoning that if they could return with some of the jewels, they could rescue her and would not have to worry about the Inquisition.
The two travelers agree it would be nice to “get [themselves] noticed back home” (49) and boast of their travels, so they “resolve to be happy no longer” (49) and ask permission to leave. The King reluctantly grants their request, conceding that “all men are free” (49), and they are allowed to leave with some of the “yellow mud” (50) and pebbles (or gold and jewels) of the country. The King orders his engineers to make a machine to lift them up across their treacherous mountains, and Candide and Cacambo leave Eldorado with the gift of 22 sheep laden with provisions, gold, diamonds, and other precious stones. As they ride away, Candide hopes their wealth will permit him to buy Cunégonde back.
Chapter 19 Summary
The first day of travel was pleasant, but the second day they lost two sheep, followed by two who died of exhaustion and seven or eight who died of hunger in the desert. After 100 days on the road, they only had two sheep left. Candide tells Cacambo that wealth is perishable, but “nothing is certain but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Cunégonde again” (51). Nearing Surinam with two sheep left and “more treasure than the King of Spain will ever possess” (51), they encounter a black enslaved man laying on the road, partially dressed and missing his left leg and right hand. The man is waiting for his owner, master Vanderdendur, and Candide learns that the enslaved man had his hand cut off because his finger got caught in the sugar-mill machinery, and his leg cut off because he had tried to run away. The enslaved man tells them “It is the price we pay for the sugar you eat in Europe” (52). He elaborates on his terrible condition, noting how the Dutch convert them to their religion, saying “we are all children of Adam” (52), but if that is the case, “no one could treat his relatives much more horribly than this” (52). Candide is moved to tears and abandons Pangloss’ “Optimism” (52) as they enter the city.
In Surinam they seek a vessel leaving for Buenos Aires. A Spanish skipper offers to make them a deal, but on hearing about his plan to rescue Cunégonde, he refuses, saying she is the Governor’s favorite mistress. After Candide cries over this, he and Cacambo decide to split up— because Cacambo is unknown, he goes to Buenos Aires to buy Cunégonde. Candide plans to go to Venice and wait for them, buying a place on Vanderdendur’s ship, who, seeing Candide’s wealth, cons him by tripling the price of the voyage. Vanderdendur loads Candide’s jewel-bearing sheep onto the ship, and promptly leaves without Candide, who complains to the city magistrate but is only fined for his efforts. Candide is sent into the “blackest melancholy” (54) but finds a ship sailing for Bordeaux. He invites “any honest man” (54) to join him on the trip, on the condition that he is “the most unfortunate and most thoroughly disgusted with his condition” (54). Candide meets with more than 20 candidates, all of whom are “as wretched” (55) as one another, but chooses a poor scholar named Martin who was abandoned by his family and who worked as a publisher in Amsterdam, as “there was no occupation in the world which could more disgust a man” (55). Candide pays the other candidates 100 piastres as a consolation.
Chapter 20 Summary
Martin and Candide set off for Bordeaux, discussing moral and physical evil along the way. Candide hopes to see Cunégonde again and still has some remaining money, so he is again “inclined towards the system of Pangloss” (56). Martin claims to be a Manichean, believing that God has abandoned the world to “some malign being” (56), except for Eldorado. His beliefs are based on his observations of the cruelty and envy of the world. As they are talking, they witness a French and a Spanish ship attacking one another; when the Spanish ship sinks, they retrieve one of Candide’s red sheep from the water. Candide sees justice in the sinking of the Dutch pirate’s ship, while Martin sees the injustice of the passengers drowned along with him. They continue arguing amicably for another 15 days until they reach France.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
After fleeing from the Jesuit reduction, Cacambo and Candide’s encounters with various cultures allow Voltaire to explore ideas of utopia, “natural man” and “savagery” in his satire. Their first encounter is with a tribe of Oreillons after Candide mistakenly kills the ape lovers of two girls in the tribe. Candide and Cacambo are captured and almost eaten by this cannibalistic tribe, which is excitedly chanting, “Let’s eat Jesuit!” (57). Candide’s panicked comment that Pangloss should witness men living “in a state of nature” (41) is Voltaire’s rebuttal to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s romanticized view that man is purer and more innocent the closer he is to nature, which is contrary to the savagery before the two travelers.
Indeed, the tribe is just as brutal, but they can likewise be reasoned with, and they treat the men well after the misunderstanding is cleared up. In fact, Cacambo wins their freedom through convoluted rhetoric: He sees that the Oreillons have mistaken them for Jesuits and agrees that they should want to eat their enemies, but because they are not in fact Jesuits, they should be freed. He cleverly obscures that they originally desired vengeance not because they are presumed Jesuit, but because Candide killed members of their tribe. When Cacambo is successful at winning their freedom and they are treated well by the tribe, Candide recalls Pangloss’ line of backwards reasoning to declare that man in a state of nature is in fact good, despite his close call with death and evidence to the contrary.
Following this chaotic encounter, Candide and Cacambo make the long, accidental journey to the utopian society hidden away in Eldorado. It is a sharp contrast to the Oreillon tribe, as well as the imperfections of Western society of the 18th century: Eldorado is an educated and established society, a peaceful land that has completely isolated itself from the world and eschews material wealth despite having everything it needs. The residents have no reverence for gold or jewels, perhaps because they are surrounded by it, and their leaders are both clever and accessible to the people. Their king embraces the travelers as equals, rather than expecting them to kneel. Candide is relieved to hear that the people of Eldorado worship one god, but their religion is uncorrupted by dishonest clergy, and such a society produces longer lifespans—at one point, they encounter a 172-year-old man.
Eldorado is Voltaire’s version of utopia, a thought experiment popular in 18th-century Europe. Unfortunately for the two travelers, it is not enough to satisfy them. They stay in this country for a month, but Candide is eventually driven by a need to distinguish himself, saying to Cacambo, “If we remain here, we shall be just like everyone else” (49). With a desire to travel again, to “get noticed back home” (49) and do a little boasting, the two men leave paradise, ignoring the king’s advice that “when you are reasonably happy somewhere, you should stay put” (49). They leave with an enormous flock of sheep carrying unimaginable wealth, most of which they lose through hardship before they even arrive in Surinam.
Solidifying this transition from paradise to hell, they encounter an enslaved man laying across the road, wearing almost nothing and missing a leg and a hand. The embodiment of the worst of European society, slavery was a much-debated topic in the 18th century, and Voltaire uses this episode to criticize the extreme cruelty of the sugar plantations that abused enslaved people while feeding European tastes for sugar. Influenced by Montesquieu’s writing on slavery, Voltaire’s satire targets not only the hypocrisy of European philosophy that speaks to equality among men yet enslaves some, he also criticizes Christians who say “we are all children of Adam” (52) and yet treats animals better than their “relatives” (52). In this moment, Candide is moved to tears and genuinely crushed by the encounter, forever denouncing Pangloss’ optimism to Cacambo.
On returning to society, Cacambo and Candide’s time as travel companions ends, and in the brief interval where Candide is companionless, he is immediately duped by the enslaved man’s master, Vanderdendur, who makes off with most of his wealth. Part of this wealth is recovered at sea, but as is typical of Candide, he shares his entire life with complete strangers and never bargains during transactions, allowing any scoundrel to anticipate his moves and assess and defraud him of his wealth.
Up until now, Cacambo has helped Candide navigate unknown cultures. Now on a boat to Bordeaux, Candide’s new traveling companion is Martin, a good match for his journey back into European society; he is a scholar and a Manichean, adding a pessimistic and cynical counterpoint to Candide’s naïve worldview. While Cacambo helped Candide “translate” foreign cultures, discussions with Martin in the following chapters allow Candide and the reader to identify the problems at the heart of European, and especially French, society as Voltaire sees it.
