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Voltaire: Candide Voltaire’s most recognized piece of literature, Candide, is a sarcastic assault on almost everything that was rife in society during his lifetime. The novel as a whole can be considered as a bleak story where main characters compare life stories to distinguish whose life is worse. Just when you think this novel cannot get anymore depressing, it does. While Candide is generally considered a universal castigation, it is optimism that Voltaire is attacking. However, there are several other humorously critical themes throughout this novel worth talking about. These themes of mockery include aristocratic snobbery, religious intolerance, militarism, and human nature. There is plausible reason to why Voltaire was so disgusted with optimism, or more particularly, Leibnizian optimism. During the years in which Candide was composed, this subject of what Voltaire considered ridiculous optimism was in full swing. This degree of optimism earns its name from Gottfried Leibniz, a rationale leader of the Voltaire’s time, branching off of Descartes. Leibnizian optimism is a theory in which we are told that there is evil in the world, and reason alone could explain that evil. Leibniz believed that there were truths even