I read Candide, a philosophically laced dramedy written by Voltaire (a pre-WWII French philosopher who predated Madonna [non-emaculate one] and Prince by being the first Western pop culture dude to make his username both his first name and surname [probably]) one night in high school due to boredom (My dad was against people over the age of twelve playing videogames).

This novella began with a handsome French aristocrat who had the meteoric potential to become whatever aristocrats strive to become if they cannot be a king. He had everything going for him except for his metaphorical (not real) Achilles heel: a dogmatic following of a local philosopher.

This philosophy (the actual teachings do not matter to the plot) led Candide to believe in the unbending viewpoint that society existed because of his followed philosopher's teachings. Of course, Candide runs into a situation where his philosophy is tested and it fails to pass the "context matters and justice is subjective" muster. The young salon enthusiast abandons the local philosopher's philosophy and becomes one of France's Most Wanted for trying to bang an aristocrat's daughter without the explicit approval of the aristocrat.

The young lovers flee together on a ship in order to find the Lost City of Gold (popularized in a Dreamwork's kids movie called.... I forgot...Encarta? Escalade? It was something that started with an E.)

Candide meets a new philosopher while on his seafaring adventure to the Dreamwork's cartoon movie city and thanks to his self-destructive personality, he blindly follows this new philosopher's teachings with the same dogmatic servitude as before.

Quick sidenote:
The French had a revolution not too long ago and became militant atheists
to the point that they hiliariously rewrote the calendar because it was too
preachy or whatever. So in order to fill the hole in their soul, they started
worshipping philosophy (I think). This may help explain why Candide acted like
he was a convert to a new religion.

While on their way to El Dorado!!! I fucking knew it started with the letter "E"! While on their way to Dreamwork's South America movie, a storm happened and they were shpwrecked. I think this proved Candide's new life philosophy to be false as well.

Upon reaching land and attempting to gather provisions for passage to South America, they run into a band of pirates who shiver Candide's timbers in the worst kind of way. Following the typical dramedy formula, Candide's aristocratic lover is violently raped by the group of pirates---

Wait! Somehow the pirates take control of Candide's ship and violently beat and rape the love of his life. This event crushes him once again and he tosses his latest philosophy into the weekly undergarment exchange that was popular in Western Europe at this time (French philosophers were a dime a dozen in this era and they also didn't change their underwear but once a week because people were gross af back then).

So Candide changes his goal from trying to find the Lost City of Gold to trying to find his girlfriend before she gets raped to death (not hyperbole in this story) by the band of pirates.

Skip to another couple discarded philosophies that failed his dogmatic tests and Candide eventually finds his lost love alive and...well...rape took a toll on her mentally and physically. For reasons I cannot remember and refuse to look up, Candide and his crew find happiness through pre-existentialism aka daily drudgery of farming. Candide does the farming thing for a bit but realizes that he isn't happy with his life. See, he began his story as Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby but later became Leonardo di Caprio in The Revenant.

The final nail in Candide's successful outlook on life was that due to his girlfriend's violent rapes, her captors had permanently molded her face into what later became known as Cubism. Candide admitted defeat in his strive for greatness and began to accept his fate of mediocrity and having an ugly wife (that poor girl). He farmed until he died and it's only my guess that future generations of Candide's also lived their lives as farmers until a post-WWII (callback) Candide become a Rock-N-Roll sensation where he later died on a toilet, thus returning his lineage back to its beginning.

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So what is there to learn from the tale of Candide? One could justifiably say it's a tale of early existentialism. Candide's only existence of actual happiness was really only a trickle of how happiness is perceived in modern times. He accepted his lot in life to toil in the fields on his farm only to come home to the love of his life that he could barely look at without vomiting.

Another argument is that Candide was a true believer in philosophy. It was very fashionable for Frenchmen at the time to declare themselves as followers of philosophy. But as history shows time and again in a repetitive circular fashion, people are trend followers and the majority of people will easily give up on a cause at the earliest sign of struggle.

So maybe Voltaire wasn't mocking philosophers of his time for their shitty understandings of life in 18th Century France. Maybe he was also mocking the followers of these couture philosophers who would abandon their entire belief structure because it may have caused them harm.

Voltaire's reasons were most likely to poke his fellow philosophers in the eye and give an example of who their followers were truly to be: Spoiled rich kids who virtue-signaled their philosophers in order to be socially accepted in the popular salons and even more obviously to get laid by the fairer sex versions of themselves: pre-WWII liberal arts majors.

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It's been a while since I've read Camus Voltaire's Candide. Did I miss anything? Is what I missed worthy of your time to be a pedant? Explain below.