Candide Garden Essay Essay, Research Paper
Thomas Cole was an American painter who lived from 1801-1848. He painted a representation of Adam and Eve s expulsion from the garden, and he called it, The Expulsion From The Garden. This painting portrays the metaphor represented in Voltaire s Candide. This could be quite possibly true, considering that Voltaire died only 23 years before Cole s birth, and most likely served him as an inspirational character.
In the best possible world, things are warm and light and people are happy. In the worst possible world things are dark shadowed and people are scared and helpless. In the middle ground people work for what they need and depend on each other for the rest. This is how Voltaire sees the different worlds, and how Cole portrayed them in his painting. Candide has seen these worlds. When he is in the best worlds, he leaves to cultivate and make it better not knowing that he couldn t make it better because it is perfect. Upon leaving these perfect worlds, he soon finds the worst worlds, like he is being punished for leaving.
Voltaire shows examples of paradise in the book, and all of them are chock full of green gardens. The paradise which Cole portrays in his painting is also a garden. Like Adam and Eve, Candide didn t stay in the paradise. For example, Candide leaves Westphalia, Candide, driven from the terrestrial paradise… and he also leaves El Dorado, We are able to pay the governor of Buenos Ayres if miss Cunegonde can be ransomed. Let us journey towards Cayenne . In the first situation, Candide leaves to cultivate his mind and life, and the second one he leaves to cultivate El Dorado with Cunegonde. When he didn t find Cunegonde immediately, he ran into Cannibals. When he didn t soon find his piece of mind after leaving Westphalia, he found only cold, barren land to sleep upon.
Voltaire s ideas of perfection were clearly garden worlds. But it seems ironic because when people are in these garden worlds, they never know they have perfection, so they strive to make it better. For example the Venetian Lord was never satisfied with his gardens so he always cultivated them, and therefore not enjoying his perfection. Candide left El Dorado and Westphalia to cultivate , but only found the bad worlds, therefore not able to enjoy the perfect worlds he had.
Throughout the book, Voltaire gives his ideas of what the garden world will bring. The only things that would happen there would be good things. For example, Pangloss and Paquette made out in the gardens, and Candide and Cunegonde reunite in the gardens. As the love scenes go they show no where else other than in the gardens. Voltaire tries to show, in these places, the relationship between happiness and being in a lush garden.
Upon leaving the perfect garden worlds, bad things happen. These sorts of things happened to Candide every time he left perfect worlds (examples have been given above). Pangloss was hanged when he left Westphalia. When Cunegonde was taken out of Westphalia she led a horrible life on almost slavery. This seems to be Voltaire s way of saying you will be punished if you leave a garden world. If you find a perfect world there should be no reason to leave, if you do punishment will be administered. In Cole s painting, he shows Adam and Eve leaving the garden world, and moving right into a dark, barren, red world with no leave on trees, just bare twigs.
Obviously Voltaire wants his readers to think badly of his desert world, so he makes bad things happen there, just like good things happen in the gardens. When Candide was in those Desert worlds he met up with Cannibals, and people were killing each other. When he left on the boat the sailor was very bad and upon arrived in Portugal, more bad things happened. Candide and Martin talked about bad things that happened in France, I made a short stay there, on my arrival I was robbed of all I had by pick pockets. These places weren t literally deserts but they represent the desert world because of they bad things that happen there.
Some desert worlds aren t actual Deserts , but many of them are. When Candide was at war he was actually walking in a desert like piece of land. He wasn t in the war but walked through it. The people who were apparently dead to Candide also wandered in desert as he had. When Cunegonde left Westphalia she went to wander in the desert for a while. This same thing happened to the old Woman Candide met. She spent more time in the desert than Cunegonde, but they both suffered like they were supposed to. Pangloss got out of the auto-da-fe alive and then tried to escape by going through the desert, which is where he wandered for a long while finding free and hostile free land.
If there was to be a third panel that represented the phrase cultivating our garden , like the first panel represented the garden world , and the second represented the desert world , I would think that it would show someone cultivating there own garden with the desert and garden worlds behind him. Pangloss said to Candide, as they were enjoying the last garden, that they both wouldn t be there eating citrus fruits if they hadn t left the old garden worlds to cultivate. What he meant by this is that there cant be one world that is perfect for everybody, perfect is relative to what you think it is, other people may think differently. In order to get a perfect world for yourself, you need to experience other perfect worlds and build on or cultivate your own garden . You have to go through desert world as well as the garden world to find your own though.
My panel would show somebody digging in a garden, cultivating it, with the desert and garden worlds he had experienced earlier in order to find out what he wanted in his own perfect world. This would work because it shows him literally cultivating his garden, literally is more of how Thomas Cole s painting deals with the two themes, there were real gardens and real deserts. It also works because it shows the path he took to finding out what he had to do to make his own utopia. Cole showed all of the places Adam and Eve went before they got to the desert world. Cole showed the path they took just like my third panel does. The accuracy of this third panel is very good because it uses the same guidelines Cole used in his panels. I imagine it the way it is because it follows the patterns that the real painter includes, and that is the real goal.