2 when Candide goes for a walk. With his short walk in the woods marked as desertion, Candide is court-martialed and offered the choice of being flogged thirty-six times by his whole regiment or having twelve musket balls shot into his brain. Being a student of Pangloss, and thus subscribing to an optimistic outlook, Candide uses “the divine gift called free-will” to choose the floggings. In this case we see that Voltaire is both satirizing the foolishness of the army for punishing someone for taking a walk as well as including a hint of satire with Candide’s notion of his “divine gift.” There is a sense of optimism in Candide’s ability to choose his undeserved consequence. Voltaire uses this exaggerated punishment of four thousand floggings to once again satirize the harshness of
2 when Candide goes for a walk. With his short walk in the woods marked as desertion, Candide is court-martialed and offered the choice of being flogged thirty-six times by his whole regiment or having twelve musket balls shot into his brain. Being a student of Pangloss, and thus subscribing to an optimistic outlook, Candide uses “the divine gift called free-will” to choose the floggings. In this case we see that Voltaire is both satirizing the foolishness of the army for punishing someone for taking a walk as well as including a hint of satire with Candide’s notion of his “divine gift.” There is a sense of optimism in Candide’s ability to choose his undeserved consequence. Voltaire uses this exaggerated punishment of four thousand floggings to once again satirize the harshness of