The Enlightenment was a period of social change in the 18th century in which people started to question previously accepted ideas and began to think for themselves. In Voltaire's "Candide" and Rousseau's "Confessions", both authors wrote to encourage change in their society's. While Voltaire uses a comedic short story to bring attention to the problems he has with society, Rousseau uses a detailed autobiography to criticize the way that authority figures wrongly influence young people in his society.
In "Candide", Voltaire pokes fun at many of the different parts of his society. Voltaire uses the church, the government, philosophers, and war as examples of a greedy society with stubborn, out of date ideas. When Candide asks the orator for food and the orator is not pleased with Candide's answer to his question, the orator replies, "Thou deservest not to eat or to drink" (p. 28).
Here, Voltaire is trying to show how corrupt the church was in his society. Voltaire believed that the church was biased about who they helped and that this was wrong because the church claimed to be selfless and ready to help whoever was in need. Another way that Voltaire pointed out a need for change in his society was through Candide's social status. Candide was rejected as an appropriate suitor for Miss Cunegund simply because he was a bastard with little money.
By using this example, Voltaire was trying to persuade his society to judge people on character instead of social status.Rousseau also writes to encourage social change, but in a different way. Rousseau believed that his life was negatively influenced by his authority figures when he was growing up. He used an autobiography to show how these authority figures not only polluted his way of thinking, but how they were responsible for his bad deeds. Rousseau believed that he would have been a totally different, and better person if his life wasn't altered by these negative authority figures; "I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a good father of a family..
." (p. 107). Rousseau believed that if he could get people to agree with him about how his life was affected by these authority figures, he could inspire social change.
Although they used different methods, both Voltaire and Rousseau worked for the same cause, which was social change. Voltaire used comedy to keep from blatantly criticizing his society, which kept him out of trouble. Comedy also kept readers interested in what Voltaire had to say. Rousseau used his own life as a tragic example of how his society negatively influenced young people. By writing for social change, Voltaire and Rousseau helped accomplish their goal of Enlightenment.
