Annalise Steinmann P.

1 
Detailed throughout Voltaire’s ​Candide, ​and especially within the last chapter of the 
novel, Voltaire illustrates the manner in which someone should live their life: that one should 
not spend their lives attempting to define the correct way to live life, as it will result in a 
never-ending search for an unattainable happiness and satiation, for this answer does not 
exist. Voltaire relates this message through metaphors and defined exemplification. Within 
the final chapter of Voltaire’s novel, Candide seeks out the advice from both a dervish and 
an old man when finding himself bored and dissatisfied among his friends and wife. Upon 
asking the dervish why humans were created and why evil persists among us, the dervish 
replies by asking Candide another question, asking when “His Highness sends a ship to 
Egypt,” does his Highness worry “whether the the ship’s mice are comfortable or 
not”(Voltaire 141). Through comparing the human race to rodentry, a race of creatures 
known for overpopulating the Earth and perpetuating a lack of intetelligence, Voltaire 
emphasizes the incomplex nature of our own overpopulated ​existence, depicting humans 
as dumb, feeble, and innumerous. Because of our worthless and meek existence, 
according to the dervish, humans are not important enough for a higher power to care 
for the outcome of our lives. 
After finding himself dissatisfied with the rudely-spoken dervish, Candide, 
Pangloss, and Martin relay similar questions to the old man, to which he replies that he 
and his family are satisfied with their life yielding crops, as it diverts focus from the evils 
and boredom of the world (Voltaire 143). Although the dervish and the old man were 
very different people with distinct backgrounds, and although they feel differently 
about man and man’s role in relation to God and the rest of the world, their advice rings 
both soundly and the same. Despite the dervish believing this in a more callous and 
de​rogatory favor, both the old man and the dervish consider the human race to be 
simplistic creatures that weren’t designed to largely impact the world beyond our 
own lives. Therefore, Candide takes this to mean that by ceasing an attempt to 
understand the complexities of our existence and focusing on manual labor, he will 
finally find satisfaction in his existence. This advice certainly renders life bearable, as 
the human lifespan is too short and the human race is too simplistic for man to 
attempt to comprehend the meaning of human existence. 
Bowman interprets both the advice given by the dervish and the old man, and 
Voltaire’s overall conclusion of the book to purport the worthlessness of defining 
how one should live their life. The final statement of the book, in response to 
Pangloss, Candide states that Pangloss’ interpretation of the old man’s advice is apt, 
but they must cultivate their garden (Bowman 1). Bowman recognizes that despite 
Candide having a rapacious desire and admiration of philosophy throughout the 
entire work, despite being in the presence of his childhood tutor to which Candide 
compared every intellectual he met, and despite his surrounding himself with 
philosophers like Martin in Pangloss’ absence to, there is no point in attempting to 
find the meaning of life or how one should live it, as that does not exist. However, 
Bowman more largely analyzes this as an attack on philosophy, more specifically, 
meliorism and fatalism, rather than an attack on people in general. Bowman’s 
overarching point agrees with Voltiare’s implications when including that final 
sentence of the novel, as Candide relinquished his quest to understand the reason 
for human existence in finding that there is none.