Candide · Chapter
V: Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and What Became of Doctor Pangloss, Candide, and James the Anabaptist explained
Candide, Pangloss, and James the Anabaptist survive a violent storm and shipwreck, but James drowns after saving a brutish sailor.
What happens
Candide, Pangloss, and James the Anabaptist survive a violent storm and shipwreck, but James drowns after saving a brutish sailor. They reach Lisbon just as a devastating earthquake strikes, killing thousands. Amid the chaos, the sailor loots and carouses, while Pangloss insists the disaster is for the best, arguing with a Familiar of the Inquisition about original sin and free will. Candide is wounded and faints, but Pangloss continues his philosophical justifications.
Themes in this chapter
Optimism vs. Pessimism
Pangloss's insistence that the earthquake is for the best starkly contrasts with the horrific suffering and death around him.
Suffering and Human Cruelty
The sailor's brutality, James's selfless drowning, and the earthquake's mass destruction highlight both human cruelty and natural disaster.
Characters to notice
- Candide
Witnesses James's drowning and is prevented from jumping after him; is wounded by falling stones and faints; receives water from Pangloss.
- Pangloss
Demonstrates a priori that the Bay of Lisbon was made for James to drown; argues with the sailor and the Familiar of the Inquisition; insists the earthquake is for the best.
- James the Anabaptist
Attempts to help during the storm, is struck by a brutish sailor, then drowns after saving that same sailor.
- The Grand Inquisitor
Appears as a Familiar of the Inquisition who questions Pangloss about original sin and free will.
Key passages
“The Anabaptist being upon deck bore a hand; when a brutish sailor struck him roughly and laid him sprawling; but with the violence of the blow he himself tumbled head foremost overboard, and stuck upon a piece of the broken mast. Honest James ran to his assistance, hauled him up, and from the effort he made was precipitated into the sea in sight of the sailor, who left him to perish, without deigning to look at him.”
James the Anabaptist tries to help during the storm, but a cruel sailor knocks him down. The sailor then falls overboard, and James saves him, only to fall into the sea himself. The sailor watches James drown without lifting a finger.
Illustrates the theme of human cruelty and the irony of James's selfless sacrifice.
“The sailor, whistling and swearing, said there was booty to be gained here. ... The sailor ran among the ruins, facing death to find money; finding it, he took it, got drunk, and having slept himself sober, purchased the favours of the first good-natured wench whom he met on the ruins of the destroyed houses, and in the midst of the dying and the dead.”
While the city lies in ruins, the sailor immediately thinks of looting, gets drunk, and hires a prostitute amid the corpses.
Highlights moral depravity and selfishness in the face of disaster.
“For, said he, all that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right.”
Pangloss argues that the Lisbon earthquake is necessary and part of the best possible world, dismissing the suffering as inevitable.
Core example of Pangloss's absurd optimism, satirizing Leibnizian philosophy.