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Voltaire’s Candide Voltaire’s satire Candide provides understanding of what establishes the notion of happiness in a person’s life and what the existence of despair means to an individual. Each character goes through an experience in the book where things turn out good for them, but then something turns out awful for them. This book shows what despair and happiness really means through the characters experiences. Candide starts off in the beginning of the book with not much knowledge except for the knowledge Pangloss gave him. Pangloss, the castle’s tutor, was an optimistic who believed this world is the “best of all possible worlds.” Candide throughout the book questioned this belief but remained with it because of certain events. Candide love Cunegonde, the baron’s daughter, but she brought him much sorrow and misery. No matter what horrible things happened to Candide he always somehow got lucky or had some good fortune. Even when Candide thought the woman he loved was dead, he finds out she is still alive. This seemed to be the pattern in this book for Candide, one terrible thing after another would happen to him but he would always have someone who would help him or he would have some good outcome t