The Power of Yellow Mud in Candide

Voltaire playfully writes about rape, disembowelment, murder, and women who have half their buttocks slashed away to feed twenty starving janissaries, to make serious assertions about the dangers of religion and materialism.

After drifting down a river current in total darkness for the span of a day, losing their canoe to rapids, and climbing across boulders, Cacambo and Candide arrive in Eldorado where the pebbles and mud are rubies and gold. To elaborate on the question Jeff asks in his blog post- Why doesn't Candide remain in this utopia? In Eldorado, everyone is a priest. There is such a surplus of food and treasure that it becomes commonplace instead of a catalyst for war and enslavement. But, this is surreal. I believe it is Candide's natural, human craving for progress and empowerment that drive him to leave paradise. He has been raised in a European society that praises material wealth, and he cannot escape this ingrained mindset. In Eldorado, wealth may be yellow mud, but to two men raised in a world that pillages, wages war, and enslaves for the earth’s rocks, the prospect of returning to society with twenty red pack-sheep carrying “more treasure than could be mustered by Asia, Europe, and Africa combined”  is irresistible (51). The most flinch-inducing, painful passage of this novel is not a man being driven through with a sword or a woman’s buttocks being severed, but the idea that two men would throw away the opportunity to live for eternity in perfection because their society has cultivated an insatiable thirst in the core of their beings for meaningless material wealth and power.

Voltaire further condemns materialism in the next chapter with the description of a black amputee who has lost a hand and a leg working in the sugar-mills. "When we work in the sugar-mills and get a finger caught in the machinery, they cut off the hand; but if we try to run away, they cut off a leg: I have found myself in both situations. It is the price we pay for the sugar you eat in Europe" (51-52). The European yearning for material wealth breeds inhumane enslavement and persecution. The slave’s anecdote moves Candide to tears, and he criticizes Pangloss’ optimistic theology yet again, but he is still trapped in a world of corrupt power and materialism. He doesn’t reject societal norms and return to Eldorado, and he is afflicted when his sheep are stolen. Unless- is he a true romantic hero, relentlessly chasing Cunegonde to satisfy the pangs of his heart? “My friend, you see how perishable are the riches of this world; nothing is certain but virtue, and the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Cunegonde again” (51). If anything redeems him in the eyes of the reader, it is Candide’s unashamed love. You can’t hate a romantic.