Francois Marie Arouet: Zadig and L'Ingenu

As fairly enjoyable as these two tales were, their chief interest to me was as reflections of that better known of Voltaire's works, Candide. Zadig, written at at the beginning of his career, and L'Ingenu, written at the end, create a sandwich of sorts, that I'm sure has been written about consistently. Unlike Candide, which seems to rotate around external circumstances, these two stories pivot on the title characters themselves. Where Candide is simpleminded, some might even say a caricature, both Zadig and Hercules, the so-called Ingenu, are noble, sophisticated, caricatures in their own way.

These relatively flat characters could cause one to assume that Voltaire is not in earnest, that the stories are cheeky or satirical--and this is the customary approach to Candide especially. My personal affection for Candide lies in my belief that Voltaire secretly meant it in earnest, that for all the scorn he heaped upon Pangloss, this really is the best of all possible worlds, and our only choice is to be content in it. With this perspective on Candide, it is only natural to wonder if the other two stand up to the same literal lens. In Zadig, Voltaire seems to earnestly believe that all is for the best, that whatever terrible thing happens there is some greater good behind it. By the time of Candide, he has clearly altered his view somewhat, but only insofar as to remove God from the equation. Where in Zadig we should accept the terrible in life because it leads to the good, in Candide we should accept it because there is no better alternative. This puts him on a rather cynical trajectory, and sure enough, by the time of L'Ingenu the terrible in life doesn't give rise to any particular philosophy, and the book ends with a flat thud where one has come to expect something rather more pithy--both in Voltaire, and in literature generally