So in Candide one finds a hero living in his utopia, the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh. Voltaire then posed the basic problem: is this indeed the best of all possible worlds, as his naive hero firmly believed? To answer that question, an inciting incident is provided — Candide's amatory play with Cunégonde, which leads to his expulsion from his Westphalian paradise. What follows is a conflict between hope and despair, as the hero experiences one thing after another. And each experience constitutes for the reader, if not until the end for Candide, a refutation of the doctrine of optimism: the brutal treatment at the hands of the Bulgars; the horrors of warfare; the tempest and earthquake; the Inquisition, where he witnessed the hanging of Pangloss and was flogged within an inch of his life; the slaying of the Jew and the Grand Inquisitor, and the stabbing of Cunégonde's brother; the loss of most of his Eldoradoan wealth; the rapacity of Parisian society. In addition, by means of digressions, well justified since each adds to the accumulating evidence against optimism, Candide heard the frightening story of the old woman's sufferings and the disheartening experience of Paquette and Giroflée. Yet even after the appearance of Martin (as late as Chapter 19), he never entirely abandoned hope, although he understandably began to question Pangloss' teachings, especially when that would-be savant reappeared as an abject beggar, ravaged by disease.
The series of adventures, therefore, were stages in the education of young Candide. Since he was a slow learner, the series was necessarily a long one, each adventure marked by its own climax — and anticlimax — until the very end of the story, when Voltaire provided the major climax. Up until then, romantic Candide remained hopeful: he could always look forward to the reunion with his incomparable Cunégonde. But when that longed-for event finally took place, he found that his beloved had lost all her beauty; and as they lived together as man and wife she became increasingly shrewish. Best of all possible worlds? His last hope was destroyed. There remained for him only to adopt a kind of stoical retreat: henceforth he would cultivate his own garden, his own little plot of ground.
