The message of Voltaire's Candide is that society is deceitful and hypocritical from top to bottom. Voltaire sees all humanity as corrupt and weak, although he sends this message with much humor. Even with the humor, however, the book paints a dark portrait of the human condition. Voltaire mocks the idea that the world is rational. Candide is a naive optimist, always wanting to believe the best about human beings, even in the face of great evidence to the contrary. He is the victim of horrible cruelty,
beaten, for example, for taking an unauthorized walk, given "four thousand strokes, which had laid bare every muscle and nerve from his neck to his backside" (Voltaire 22). The message is clear: the innocent, naive, vulnerable, hopeful, positive-thinking individual will be abused terribly by others. For all the ordeals Candide endures, Voltaire does allow for at least the hope symbolized by the "garden" of which Candide repeatedly speaks at the end of the book (Voltaire 120). Still, taken as a whole, the message of the book is not positive but profoundly negative. In fact, one of Voltaire's favorite targets is Pangloss's philosophy which argues that the world is the best of all possible worlds and that, therefore, all is for the best. For example, after Lisbon has been destroyed by an earthquake, Pangloss argues, "For . . . all is for the best. For if there's a volcano at Lisbon, it couldn't be anywhere else. For it's impossible for things not to be where they are. For all is well" (Voltaire 30). Voltaire's message is that this philosophy of Pangloss is absurd, that all is far from well and will never be well in this world. As the old woman on the ship says, "If you find a single [passenger] who hasn't often cursed his life, who hasn't often told himself he was the most miserable man in the world, you can throw me overboard head first" (Voltaire 49).
The message of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is that man's quest for power and k...