What is the significance of jacques in candide

Convinced that the world God created must necessarily be perfectly planned and executed, optimists end up drawing far-fetched and unlikely connections between apparently unrelated events, such as the formation of a bay and the drowning of Jacques. Voltaire bases the earthquake in Candide on an actual historical event that affected him deeply.

Voltaire strongly condemned indifference, and his belief that human inaction allows suffering to continue is evident in his depictions of the sailor and Pangloss. Beginning in the Middle Ages, the officials of the Inquisition systematically tortured and murdered tens of thousands of people on the slightest suspicion of heresy against orthodox Christian doctrine.

Jews, Protestants, Muslims, and accused witches were victims of this organized campaign of violence. Like many Enlightenment intellectuals, Voltaire was appalled by the barbarism and superstition of the Inquisition, and by the religious fervor that inspired it.

In hitting Jacques the sailor almost falls overboard. In a gesture of turning the other cheek Jacques saves the sailor. In the rescue Jacques falls overboard, the sailor does nothing to help him and he drowns. Later the ship sinks, and Pangloss, Candide, and the sailor are the only survivors. In the two hundred years from the Reformation to Voltaire's day the only histories of Anabaptism read by non-Mennonites were by their critics.

Thus Voltaire's knowledge of Anabaptism was formed by these works. However, he also observed and no doubt encountered their descendents in the form of Mennonites in Netherlands and Alsace and he was impressed by their tolerance and their simple life of Christian discipleship. Voltaire was undogmatic but the quality of life one leads was of prime importance to him.

Voltaire wrote Candide during the Age of Enlightenment and through this work with satire and picaresque the hero, Candide, embraces the optimistic and hopeful philosophy of his mentor Pangloss that this "is the best of all possible worlds.

Jacques actually practices charity rather than merely talking about it. On the contrary, other Christians are not at all charitable; they threaten and ill treat Candide. Though she has often been close to suicide, she always finds a reason to live. It is implied numerous times that he has homosexual tendencies. Jacques is a humane Dutch Anabaptist. He cares for the itinerant Candide and Pangloss. Despite his kindness, Jacques is pessimistic about human nature.

He drowns in the Bay of Lisbon while trying to save the life of an ungrateful sailor. The farmer has a modest farm outside Constantinople. Candide and his friends are impressed with his lifestyle of hard work and simple pleasures, and adopt it for themselves. The count is a wealthy Venetian.

He has a marvelous collection of art and literature, but he is bored with and critical of everything. She has an affair with Pangloss and gives him syphilis. She eventually turns to prostitution to support herself. Like her, he is miserable and does not get any happier after Candide gives him a large sum of money.

The Grand Inquisitor is an important figure in the Portuguese Catholic Church and represents the hypocrisy of religious leaders.

Meanwhile, he orders that suspected heretics be burned alive. Don Issachar is a wealthy Jew. Don Fernando is the governor of Buenos Aires. Vanderdendur is a cruel slave owner and an unscrupulous merchant.