Candide can never seem to get a break. Even after he gets kicked out of the castle, horrible things continue to plague him. Why? He hasn’t done anything bad. He just doesn’t know any better. The initial mishap (and one of the most significant) was him getting kicked out of his “Eden.” It wasn’t fair. It was a mutual expression of lust between him AND Cunegonde.
As a matter of fact, Cunegonde learned this sort of behavior from Pangloss. Earlier in chapter one, it described an encounter between Pangloss and a chambermaid. Pangloss served as the serpent to tempt Cunegonde into engaging in the same forbidden activity he was. It was a little after that her and Candide got caught. Cunegonde and Pangloss should have been punished too. Although, it could be argued that eventually they were all kicked out of the castle and their paradise was destroyed.
Candide was thrust into a world he wasn’t ready for. His naïve, optimistic nature led him to get taken advantage of or in some kind of trouble multiple times. He begins to question his philosophy as misfortune continues to follow him. The best of all worlds definitely isn’t the one he’s living in, and he’s forced to learn it the hard way. That’s the real reason his punishments are so unnecessarily harsh. It’s supposed to demonstrate how long can a person go on believing something even with increasing evidence against it. If he doesn’t begin to change, nothing good will ever happen.
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