Fact VS Fiction: Or Is It?
In reading Voltaire’s “Candide,” I find that the story is full of both fact and fiction. In real life the world is full of everyone’s tragic story. The old servant woman amazed both Candide and Cunegonde with the bare facts of the history of her life and where she had came from as well as the horrors that she had experienced. This is shown as she states, “My lady, …you do not know my birth and rank; and if I showed you my rear end, you would not talk as you do, you might even speak with less assurance” (Voltaire 534). Telling them of her birth right and family of high stature surely astounded them as it did me. They saw that what she told them was actual fact and the person she is now is the after effect of living through piracy, wars and physical abuse.
If there was ever a place on the face of this earth where people lived who really had no interest in gold and jewels of all kinds what so ever, or no desire for them or their worth; that city would be over ran with all kinds of villainous and greedy people. Surely you do know that the Eldorado that Candide found was pure fiction, because no such place exists except for inside of the authors mind. Just the idea of being able to eat a lavish meal at an exclusive restaurant or tavern without having to pay for it in any town or city is ludicrous. After Candide and Cacambo were finished eating, they tried to pay for their meal and the host and hostess wouldn’t hear of it. To them it was very humorous and this is depicted when the host says, “Gentleman …, we see clearly that you’re foreigners; we don’t meet many of you here. Please excuse our laughing when you offered us in payment a couple of pebbles from the roadside” (Voltaire 547). To the people of that town the jewels were just colored rocks; to Candide and Cacambo they were rare and expensive jewels. This part of the story is as fictitious as it gets.