At the onset of Voltaire's (520) Candide, we are introduced to the hero "whom nature had endowed with the gentlest of characters. His face bespoke his soul. His judgment was rather sound and his mind of the simplest." This characterization of Candide, the hero and protagonist of Voltaire's story, depicts a relatively innocent young man who encounters a world that is ultimately absurd and which challenges the philosophy of the tutor Pangloss, "who proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause" in "this best of all possible worlds (Voltaire 521)."
The thesis addressed herein is that heroism ultimately consists of tending one's own garden and cultivating that garden (Voltaire 579-580). Certain conditions must be fulfilled in order to live the heroic life. As literary critic Payton Richter (138) has put it, "man must love his fellow man and be just, for individual morality is the basis of every human society worthy of the name." Candide's own heroism is amply demonstrated throughout the story. For example, Candide convinces Jacques the Anabaptist to pay physicians to cure Pangloss of his syphilis (Voltaire 530-538). Additionally, having longed for Cunegond through many adventures, Candide ultimately marries a woman who is ugly, deformed, and nothing more than an intolerable shrew (Voltaire 574-576).
In essence, Candide endures numerous travails and encounters many examples of man's brutality only to come to the conclusion that tending and cultivating his own personal garden is the most heroic act possible. Arthur Scherr (76) suggests that Candide recognizes that many men have become nothing more than wolves and that the only way to make sense of an absurd world is to focus on what one can do and achieve. Making the best of a bad situation is therefore the greatest form of heroism that an ordinary person can exhibit (Richter 139).
What a hero must learn to endure, therefore, is n
...