Elaine Scarry says that by civilization creates the awareness of what a person unconsciously needs. Candide by Voltaire and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley both feature characters who approach civilization differently. Victor Frankenstein attempted to create a whole new civilization by creating a completely different creature than those that already existed while Candide and Frankenstein’s monster approached society attempting to find their place. Candide, Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster all fail themselves with “each successive intensification of civilization” and in the process of attempting to integrate themselves into society they sacrifice everything else only to eventually give up and focus on themselves after realizing civilization was not worth their sacrifices.
The place where they begin determines what journey they will take to find what they think they want. Victor Frankenstein, the monster and Candide all began their stories differently and it impacted how they wanted to be part of civilization. Candide lived in a castle and had access to anything he needed only to be kicked out for …show more content…
At every turn something would go wrong and he would passively take it as it came because the teachings of Pangloss, “everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose” (Voltaire 16). The philosophy stuck with him through everything while he battled his way to surviving in whatever society he ended up in. Candide sacrificed so much to survive in simple society. From the moment he was kicked out of the castle and had his free will taken from him, to losing a friend on the water, to finding and losing Cunegonde again. He sacrificed free will, love, friendship, money and at many times sanity and happiness to find a place in society with Cunegonde. Although he ended up sacrificing so much, he gained strength that he would not have otherwise received if he had remained at the