Aegis 2015
24
In Swift’s Shadow: An Essay Examining the Influence of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels on Voltaire’s Candide >>> Lydia Crannell When reading the two narratives Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Candide (1759), one cannot help but notice their similarities. Both Jonathan Swift and Voltaire choose young, naive male protagonists who get into trouble while traveling the world. Both authors express distaste for human ignorance, optimism, and superficiality. Swift and Voltaire share a mutual dislike for their respective countries and for the view of human nature presented by the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, who believed that all was in good order and everything happened for the best. Because of these comparisons, one could claim that Voltaire mimics Swift’s writing and published a work so heavily influenced by Gulliver’s Travels that even with a difference of 33 years, the two satires bear a striking resemblance. While it is clear that Voltaire used principles and plot found in Gulliver’s Travels as a foundation for his Candide, the satirist still remained true to his beliefs; Voltaire had an entirely different approach to violence and wrote on serious topics in Horatian style unlike Swift’s Juvenalian (yet childish) ramblings. The comparison of the authors’ narratives and lead characters develops the idea that Voltaire attempted to create Candide around principles in Gulliver’s Travels. Although Candide is told in third person and Gulliver’s Travels in first, both satires focus on a young male adventurer. The reader can clearly see the correlation of naïveté and ignorance between heroes, despite the characters’ self-confidence. Both Candide and Gulliver easily fall into traps: “For as I happened to lie on my Back, I found my Arms and Legs were strongly fastened Ligatures across my Body…In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left Leg, which advancing gently forward over my Breast, came almost up to my Chin…I perceived it to be a human Creature not six Inches high, with a Bow and Arrow in his Hands, and a Quiver at his Back”.1 Like Gulliver with the Lilliputians, Candide also finds himself in trouble within the first few pages. After being shunned from Cunégonde’s castle, Candide wanders right into the hands of the Bulgars who keep him prisoner.2 The short episodic chapters in both Voltaire and Swift’s narratives follow the same structure: the main character sets out on an adventure, gets caught in some sort of trouble and tries to adapt, succeeds and manages to ‘escape’ the problem, and finally continues on his merry way towards another situation. Through this pattern, the two authors manipulate their respective explorers as satirical figures themselves or as tools to dish out moral jibes
