It has been held that the pompous Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh is one of the representations of Frederick the Great, with whom Voltaire had such close relations for so long a time. Later, as we shall see, it is the baron's son who appears to be identified as the Prussian ruler. Here the original identification is justified in view of the fact that the son is said to be very much like his father. The latter is depicted as one who is inordinately vain and all-powerful. He is always addressed as "My Lord"; all those who serve him laugh appreciably at his stories.
Among the more ingenious theories is that Candide to some extent represents Voltaire here, as he does elsewhere in the tale from time to time. The Frenchman is said to have suspected that he was illegitimate, and he began life sufficiently optimistic and satisfied with the world. It has further been suggested that the fair Cunégonde is none other than Mme. de Châtelet herself. And it has been said that the Cunégonde-Candide affair represents the common passion of Frederick's sister for Baron Trenck.
The name of the oracle of the baron's castle, Pangloss, derives from the Greek and means "all tongues." It may be added that nigology, part of the title of Pangloss' impressive subject matter, may very well derive from the French nigaud, which means "booby." Thus Voltaire's mockery and satire make an early appearance in Candide. It is surely going too far to say that Pangloss is a caricature of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, the great German philosopher and mathematician, for whom Voltaire had expressed admiration on more than one occasion; but Pangloss' optimistic philosophy is a caricature of that of Leibnitz' as it was systematized by Christian Wolff (1679-1754) and popularized widely in the Essay On Man (1733-34) by Alexander Pope.
Whereas the main target of Voltaire's attack remains the optimistic philosophy which held that all is for the best, he did not neglect to satirize other things, including excessive pride and the essential littleness of humanity. Thus, according to rumor, the baron's sister refused to marry her lover, who had only seventy-one divisions on his coat of arms indicating the degrees of nobility. Actually the maximum number that an aristocrat could possess was much less than this. And what of the baron himself? A measure of his greatness was that his castle had a door and a window, and a piece of tapestry hung on the wall of his great hall. One is reminded of Swift's Lilliputian emperor, who was taller by the length of a thumbnail than any of his subjects.
