A Satirical Voltaire

As I began to read Voltaire's Candide I noticed something that caught my attention and I thought of it to be rather odd. Voltaire is actually satirizing most if not all characters and their personal traits. For example the name of the barony, "Thunder-ten-tronckh" although many people might have not taken it this way, I surely found it to be even mocking. Voltaire's word choice is questionable, one can say these words are childish because of the alliteration in between hyphens. He also undermines the families nobility, the very pride that one feels for their family name, their legacy. We see once again the use of mockery towards the characters when Pangloss, the castle's tutor, teaches a rather strange profession “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology” we are given another example of Voltaire's childish word choice.

Another interesting demonstration of satire in which we see over and over in Candide is the inevitable display of going against the orthodox lifestyle or beliefs. For example we see early in the book that Voltaire ignores the aristocracy belief in natural superiority at birth when the baron's sister refuses to marry Candide's father because he only possessed 71 quarterings while she had 72. Again Voltaire illustrates the complete ignorance of Voltaire towards what was known as orthodox, in other words, he goes against what most people saw normal and just. In those times woman weren't given the decision to marry whom they wanted, they were told who would be their partner in matrimony.