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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... 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.
