Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Voltaire’s Candide are both stories that include a character who is forced on a journey, but undergo a change that affects them mentally, emotionally, and in Oroonoko’s case, physically. Each writer is writing for a different purpose but both incorporate historical events that are relevant to the time they are writing in. The characters in both stories witness tragic events such as the Lisbon earthquake in Candide and Oroonoko being whipped and beaten. Aphra Behn bases her novella on the slave trade and the Middle Passage which two very important factors in Oroonoko. Voltaire satirizes human suffering in Candide by making fun of both the Moderns and the Ancients who had different views on rational thinking during the Enlightenment. Each character evolves in their own way but they also have similarities in their journeys and the conclusions that they come to near the end of their journeys.…show more content… One main issue in the story is that horrible things continue to happen and Candide and Pangloss try to justify it by saying that everything is for the best. This is Voltaire’s way of addressing the Moderns and the Ancients with his use of satire. Even though Candide encounters several bad situations he continues to believe what Pangloss has taught him. His first unfortunate situation was being kicked from the Baron’s home for kissing Cunegonde, and then joining the Bulgars army. In Candide’s lifetime, he seems to make a few naïve and bad decisions but the change is shown in the end when settles in Constantinople to work on a farm and learn that the key is productivity. At that point Candide has become wiser and more aware of the way the world works, and is like the transformation of
