Similar Troubles In Dissimilar Times Essay Research

Similar Troubles In Dissimilar Times Essay, Research Paper

Similar Troubles in Dissimilar Times:On the comparison of Jailbird and Candide The experiences of Walter F. Starbuck in Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird, and of Candide in Voltaire’s Candide, were both used to express what Vonnegut and Voltaire disapproved of in their respective societies. Although a span of over two hundred years existed between Vonnegut’s and Voltaire’s writings, many of the circumstances their main characters experienced were similar. Candide and Starbuck have similar views on life and the best of all possible worlds. Their views are influenced specifically by the lives and opinions of the minor characters they encounter. Voltaire’s and Vonnegut’s similar views towards war are portrayed through Candide, Starbuck, and many of the characters they encounter. They use these characters to point out that war is pointless, and to show the hardships, gruesomeness, and how people fight for causes they do not believe. Two men who find Candide on the side of the road see that he is at least five foot five, so they take him in and feed him. They ask him “if you do not deeply love the King of the Bulgarians.” Candide replied “Not at all, for I have never seen him” (Candide 3). They then told him “Now you are the help, the support, the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your glory is assured” (Candide 4). Candide then ran the gauntlet and fought in the war against the Abares for a King he did not know. This shows how little people did the actual fighting and dying for the big people’s wars. The Abares and the Bulgarians were probably neighboring countries, and were probably friends, but were forced to leave their farms and other occupations to fight against each other, all because their kings had a disagreement about something. Many of the people fighting in this war were poverty stricken, the little people of the lowest social classes. Voltaire shows how unfair it is for these people to fight for their kings who lives lavishly, yet does nothing to help them in their state of need. Candide had to fight in this war, and was neither Bulgarian or Abares. Voltaire uses this to further emphasize how people fight in wars that they know nothing about.The old woman’s galley was raided by the Knights of Malta, and the passengers were carried to Morocco to be slaves. Morocco swam in blood when we arrived. Fifty sons of the Emperor Muley-Ismael had each their adherents; this produced fifty civil wars, of blacks against blacks, and blacks against tawnies, and tawnies against tawnies, and mulattoes against mulattoes. In short it was a continual carnage throughout the empire. (Candide 25)This quote shows how little people fight against their fellow people, and even possibly their family and friends for the big people. Voltaire makes a point that it is not just the blacks fighting against the mulattoes, or the tawnies against the blacks, but that they were fighting against their own people. The old woman watched as everyone was killed, raped, and mangled. The old woman then became the property of an Aga of the Janissaries who was ordered away to defend the Azof, who were besieged by the Russians. While in a fort, the Russians used famine to force them out. Instead they ate one another, and spared the old woman eating only one of her buttocks. Voltaire uses the old woman to show the dreadfulness of war, and how innocent people are killed merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Voltaire shows the extremes people go to while at war. They even lower themselves to eat each other, while many of them do not even know the cause for which they are fighting their own people. This again shows little people fighting and dying all because of a conflict between two big people. Starbuck’s wife Ruth was a perfect example of the tragedies of war, after spending seven years of her life in a German concentration camp, just for being Jewish. Her father, mother, and two siblings were all killed in the concentration camps. When Starbuck first saw her, she had just been released and resembled an anorexic boy. After personally seeing the hardships war can cause, Ruth said, “when you kill Evil here in Nuremburg, be sure to bury it at a crossroads and drive a stake through its heart-or you just might see it again at the next full moooooooooooooooooon” (Jailbird 69). This quote is used to show that after a war as horrible as World War II most people would think that there is no possibility of war in the future. Ruth knows better than this and says that people must be careful or else this will continue to repeat itself in the future. Vonnegut uses Ruth to show the effects of war on innocent people. Ruth was not on either side of the fighting, yet was caught in the middle and was forced to experience the hardships of war based solely upon her heritage.

Cleaveland Lawes, who was a black man, was captured by the Chinese in the Korean War. The Chinese major in charge of his prison had been a Harvard man. Lawes eventually became friends with this major and was persuaded to return to China after the war instead of returning to his home in Georgia. Vonnegut uses this to show that China, the country Lawes was fighting against, turned out to be a better place to live than America. Lawes was probably safer at war than in his own country, where family and friends had been killed by the Ku Klux Klan. Lawes says that “They couldn’