Reading Notes Week 3 "Candide", Part A

This week I focused on the story "Candide," by Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arquet), pages 252 - 273.

I found a common theme in this book - love - between Candide and Miss Cunegonde. I also feel this story and "Tartuffe." Both stories seem to have the common theme of love, and strike me as stories similar to Shakespeare's "Rome and Juliet." Candide and Cunegonde have this love, those sparks between each other, that no matter what they went through, they somehow knew that in the end, they'd be together. Poor Cunegonde, having to go through all those different owners and getting (what seems to me) raped by different men. One part of the story that shares the sparks between Candide and Cunegonde, is on page 356, "...he kissed her hand quite innocently with remarkable vivacity and emotion; their lips met, their eyes lit up, their knees trembled, their hands wandered." Yet the Baron ends up kicking out Candide, but you can tell their true love for each other because, "Candide, ejected from the earthly paradise, wandered for a long time without knowing where he was going, weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, and gazing back frequently on the most beautiful of castles which contained the most beautiful of Baron's daughters. He slept without eating..." (pg. 357), which goes to show their love for each other. Their characters are also very loyal to each other, since they only seem to think of each other and want to be with each other, always trying to get back to each other.