Voltaire's "Candide" Part III Trivia Quiz

Answer: He finds out Candide is planning to marry Cunégonde.

The Jesuit is not happy when he hears the news that his sister is with the Governor of Buenos Aires, and suggests to Candide that they rescue her. Candide is grateful, and tells him that he is to marry Cunégonde himself, but the Jesuit is very angry that Candide would be audacious enough to want to marry such a rich and noble woman as Cunégonde when he is nothing. He slaps Candide with the side of his sword, and Candide, in defence, stabs him in the stomach, immediately lamenting afterwards: "I am the mildest man in the world, yet I have already killed three men - and two of them were priests."

Afterwards, Candide dresses in the Jesuit's clothes, and gets past the frontier by posing as him.

Answer: He shoots two monkeys.

Candide and Cacambo, his valet, see two girls being chased by monkeys. The girls are screaming aloud as the monkeys are biting their buttocks. Candide shoots the monkeys dead with his rifle, but Cacambo tells him that he has just killed the girls' lovers!

Answer: True

Candide and Cacambo awaken to find themselves tied with ropes made out of bark, surrounded by fifty naked tribesmen, called Oreillons (French for 'mumps'). The girls whose monkey lovers have been shot by Candide have alerted the tribe to their presence.

The Oreillons plan to roast and eat the men, especially Candide, as they mistake him for being a Jesuit, since he is still wearing the Jesuit clothes of the dead Baron. Cacambo manages to reason with them, advising them to go to the frontier and inquire there about the dead Jesuit. This they do, and once they realize that Candide is not a Jesuit, they free them!

Answer: El Dorado

Cacambo is bewildered by the closed off city, where things are so different from what they are used to - the residents do not care for the piles of jewels that cover the streets, and though they believe in a God, they do not feel a need to pray to him, for they have everything they could possibly want.

After a month, Candide tires of being in the land of perfection, as he does not have Cunégonde by his side. However, it is very difficult to leave El Dorado - it takes their engineers a fortnight to make the machine to launch them out of the city!

Answer: A black slave with a hand and a leg cut off

The man works in a sugar mill in Suriname. His left leg and right hand are missing. Candide inquires as to how this happened. The slave answers: "When we labour in the sugar-works, and the mill catches a finger, they cut off a hand. When we try to run away, they cut off a leg. I have suffered both of these misfortunes. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe."

Answer: Venice, Italy

Candide tells Cacambo to bribe the Governor with diamonds from El Dorado if he does not consent to Cunégonde leaving. Cacambo is upset to be separated from Candide, but he agrees to the plan.

Answer: They must be the unhappiest person in the province.

Candide listens to each man's unfortunate tale until four in the morning, eventually deciding on Martin, a scholar who has worked for ten years in a publisher's in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, for "no employment [...] could be more disgusting than this".

It doesn't seem that Martin is unfortunate at all at this point; steady employment surely cannot be a bad thing! But it gets worse for poor Martin - his wife robbed him, his son beat him, and his daughter abandoned him to elope with a Portuguese man. Voltaire in his narrative acknowledges that Martin is far from the most unfortunate of the men that Candide speaks with, but Candide at least gives the others some money.

Answer: Manichaeism

Manichaeism (or Manicheism) is the belief that the world is struggling between light and dark, and that, as human history goes on, the light will gradually be removed, back to the World of Light from where it came. In Martin's words, "God has handed [the world] over - excepting always El Dorado - to some malignant being". He does not notice anything good in the world - a stark contrast to what Pangloss has taught Candide: that this world is "the best of all possible worlds".

Martin and Candide, on the ship to Bordeaux, argue most of the way, because of their conflicting beliefs.

Answer: He becomes seriously ill.

At first the illness is caused by fatigue. Candide rests in an inn, with many people by his side, due to the diamond he wears on his finger and the rest of his wealth. After he is bled, the illness becomes worse, and a priest visits to offer to sell him "an note of exchange, payable to the bearer in the other world". Candide refuses, and the priest swears he shall not be buried. Martin threatens the priest and then throws him out of the room, and this is what gets Candide in trouble with the authorities.

Answer: No

Unfortunately, it is all a scam. Candide and Martin go to visit "Cunégonde", where she is obscured by bedcurtains and cannot speak, but soon enough officers come upon them and arrest them! The abbé is a fraud, and has arranged the arrest. But Candide bribes the main officer with three diamonds to take him to Venice to await the real Cunégonde.

The officer leaves them with his brother in Dieppe, where they embark a ship going to Portsmouth, England.