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Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—The Battle:
Voltaire employs verbal irony, metaphor, and simile in his depiction of the battle between the Bulgarian and Abarian armies:
THERE WAS NEVER anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
In Candide, the war between the Bulgariand and Abarians represents the Thirty Years War, during which bloody clashes between the French and Prussian armies scarred Central Europe. Here, Voltaire describes, in a metaphor, the “ music” of the cannons as they shoot out across the field of battle. Here, Voltaire’s language is drenched in irony, as he mockingly praises the glory of a battle that leads to the violent deaths of “thirty thousand souls,” and so too does he ironically employ the optimistic philosophical language of Leibniz in his references to “the best of worlds” and “sufficient reason.” Throughout the battle, Candide “trembled like a philosopher,” a simile that emphasizes the gulf between his high-minded philosophical ideas and the practical realities of life and war.
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Christopher Columbus:
Voltaire makes various allusions to the New World in a passage in which Professor Pangloss explains that his syphilis infection originated in Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. The passage is also an example of situational irony:
“[It] was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the Japanese, know nothing of it [...]
Here, Voltaire alludes to Columbus, whose famous 1492 voyage to the Americas initiated the Age of Exploration, with complex and far-reaching consequences both for Europe and the New World. Pangloss explains that the introduction of syphilis to Europe does not contradict his belief that Earth is “the best of all possible worlds,” as Columbus’ voyage also brought chocolate and cochineal to Europe. Here, Voltaire alludes to two of the most famous and valuable goods transported from the New World across the Atlantic: chocolate and Cochineal, a red dye made from crushing small insects that live on cacti in Mexico. There is a strong sense of irony to this scene, as these goods do not seem to justify the introduction of an illness that “contaminates the source of life” in afflicting the genitalia of men and women.
Related Themes:
