Comparing Candide And Kosinski's Novel, Being There
1318 Words6 Pages
Voltaire’s Candide and Kosinski’s novel, Being There mutually contain naïve and feeble-minded main characters that are forced to view the world in a fresh perspective. Candide is a novel based in the 1750s that portrays various misfortunes of a kind-hearted, but childlike gentleman. Being There is a novel from the 1960s, revealing the unexpected journey of a naïve gardener who has little knowledge; consequently by the ending he attains a position of immense power. Both of these novels have characters, themes, symbols, tone, settings, and targets that coincide, nevertheless in different ways. The Folly of Optimism is the constant theme in the novel Candide. Pangloss and his student Candide maintain this idea that “everything is for the best…show more content… Although, Candide does embrace optimism to the point of foolishness the overall theme is media culture and television verses reality. Television has a way of manipulating a situation and solely letting people view particular standpoints. I believe that this point is in the novel, for illustration when Chance appeared on television everyone assumed he was extremely intelligent although the truth was he is untaught and candid. To Chance, reality and television are transposable. He relies on the knowledge he collects from the television to define how to act and react to circumstances, moods, and individuals. Therefore, how does someone who trusts on the unpredictable television develop into a person of overwhelming power? This bears the question, are people high in humanity not constantly who they come off to be? Are they actually intelligent or misconstrued? These themes both divulge settings where individuals are unaware about the reality of the world they are surviving in, and embrace this unblemished and youthful mentality leading them into scenarios that they may not be able to grip or bounce back…show more content… Philosophers are targets through out the novel, for instance the overbearing comments of Pangloss and his constant loyalty to the world being “the best of all possible worlds”. Pangloss’s own experiences contradict his beliefs, nonetheless he remains faithful to it nonetheless. Pangloss is not a three- dimensional character. Instead, he is an exaggerated parody of an overly optimist Englightment philosopher. Optimism is revealed each time Pangloss and Candide encounter a horrible situation such as the earthquake, even after the death of many people they both trusted in a brighter and happier future. In Being There, the targets were broadcasting, wealthy individuals, and political personas. Broadcasting was targeted the whole time due to Chance’s constant obsession with television and his mocking of each word and movement. This targeted television because it was almost calling out those channels for causes antisocial tendencies, uneducated people, and machine like thinking and actions. Wealthy individuals were ridiculed for their overstated conversations and how they translate them, for sample, Chance would talk about gardening and Ben would translate that into his own desires causing chance to seem intelligent and overstating chances actual meaning. Rich people were also portrayed as being gullible and followers to what Chance said and did. Political personas were targeted for their constant fight to be vague and