An optimist tours the worst of all possible worlds and learns to garden.
Who drives the story
The naive hero, expelled from Edenic shelter and dragged through war, shipwreck, and the Inquisition while chasing Cunégonde across two continents. He ends up married, rich enough, and quietly done with philosophy — a gardener.
Candide's tutor and the book's great fool: the professor of metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology who insists all is for the best through syphilis, hanging, and galley slavery. He survives everything and learns nothing.
The Baron's daughter and Candide's love, passed between owners as a mistress and reduced to dishwashing slavery in Constantinople. She returns ugly and bad-tempered, and Candide marries her anyway — out of spite.
Cunégonde's maid, illegitimate daughter of Pope Urban X, who has survived pirates, slavery, mutilation, and worse. She claims to have suffered more than anyone, and she's probably right.
A pessimistic Manichaean scholar Candide hires in Suriname as a traveling companion. He spends the voyage arguing that the world is full of fools and evil — and he's rarely wrong.
Candide's resourceful valet in the Americas, the son of a mestizo father and an Indigenous mother. He talks them out of the cooking pot, finds El Dorado, and ends up a slave before delivering the news that saves the plot.
The Jesuit colonel who survives his own stabbing, only to forbid Candide's marriage on grounds of nobility. Candide marries Cunégonde to spite him and sells him back to the galleys.
Also in the story
The one genuinely good man in the book, a Dutch merchant who shelters Candide and pays to cure Pangloss. He drowns in Lisbon harbor saving a sailor who lets him die.
How they are connected
The naive hero, expelled from Edenic shelter and dragged through war, shipwreck, and the Inquisition while chasing Cunégonde across two continents.
Candide's tutor and the book's great fool: the professor of metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology who insists all is for the best through syphilis, hanging, and galley slavery.
CunégondeThe Baron (Cunégonde's brother)
The Baron's daughter and Candide's love, passed between owners as a mistress and reduced to dishwashing slavery in Constantinople.
Cunégonde's maid, illegitimate daughter of Pope Urban X, who has survived pirates, slavery, mutilation, and worse.
A pessimistic Manichaean scholar Candide hires in Suriname as a traveling companion.
Candide's resourceful valet in the Americas, the son of a mestizo father and an Indigenous mother.
The Baron (Cunégonde's brother)Candide
The Jesuit colonel who survives his own stabbing, only to forbid Candide's marriage on grounds of nobility.
The one genuinely good man in the book, a Dutch merchant who shelters Candide and pays to cure Pangloss.
Jacques the AnabaptistPangloss
The one genuinely good man in the book, a Dutch merchant who shelters Candide and pays to cure Pangloss.
Go deeper
The problem of evil · Optimism as complacency · The folly of rank and wealth · Work as the answer
Themes explainedThe full story act by act, the ending explained and a quick quiz.
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