Candide's Punishments, Do They Fit the Crime?

   I think this question depends a lot on what you consider Candide's "crime" to be.  He has done several sketchy things in the book so far, like killing three people, some in self-defense and some as preventative measures, but I think his over arching "crime," especially according to Voltaire, would be his insistence on his protagonist views.  He has been a firm believer in Liebniz/Pangloss' philosophy, his faith wavering at times but never failing to return to him.

   In this sense of a crime, I think his punishments do fit it.  Voltaire is playing with him, as a test subject to test the validity of the idea that all is good in the world.  He keeps throwing him all of these terrible, unexplainable things to show him that it is not so easy to explain everything away with the sweeping statement that all is for the best.  When Candide insists on holding his beliefs, Voltaire punishes him by showing how harsh his ideas can be by testing him with the pain and suffering of someone he loves, Lady Cunègonde.  He is trying to show to the reader and to Candide how the philosophy gets harder and harder to stand by when terrible things happen for, seemingly, no reason at all.  Every time Candide has been "punished" he has doubted his beliefs for a moment, and then something else has happened that solidified them in his mind and let him return, in full, to Pangloss' philosophy.  Voltaire's world then responds by punishing him again, trying again and again to show Candide how wrong he is and what a harsh place the world can be.

The Modern Gadfly

   I don't think there is any one modern gadfly, but rather a fleet of them.  Today's society is extremely conducive to gadflies, enabling anybody with an internet connection and a will to voice their opinions to be heard throughout the world.  People have taken hold of this opportunity and take advantage of it at every turn.  Anything with a comments section is riddled with the thoughts of today's gadflies, everybody thinking what they have to say will have some earth-shattering, life-changing effect on all who read it.  In reality, most of us scroll through the musings and critiques of faceless words on the internet for amusement, taking little to none of it to heart.
   While this hyper-connectivity has gone a bit over board and dipped into the annoying side of advancement, I do think it is important to have a voice in this world.  Gadflies are not just creatures of annoyance and criticizing, but rather people who force us to ask the questions that facilitate growth and change.  There is a lot of garbage to wade through but there is also a lot of good that can come from the modern gadfly and their omni-presence.  I think there is a fine line that we are yet to fully understand between this helpful gadfly and an unnecessary disturbance.  But if there weren't people out there who could not rest until they had voiced their thoughts on every little occurrence, a lot of those occurrences would go unnoticed.  I think it is essential to have some form of a gadfly in a society.  We need a voice present that will never hesitate to point out what is wrong with a situation or idea.  We need someone whose default is to question what is going on so that we can assure ourselves we are alright with it.

The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living?

To say the unexamined life is not worth living is most notably harsh.  Whether or not it is a valid point, I think the idea that those who do not have points of deep inward reflection do not deserve to live at all is too grand a statement.  Nonetheless, I think there is some truth to this.  I think this digs at the root of the question, "What is the meaning of life."  Many would say the meaning of life is to be happy.  But if we were to spend our lives shut in our room hooked up to some machine that made us experience the constant sensation of joy, would this be a life well spent?  What is happiness?  I think it is more than a split second of a good feeling, it is all that comes with that feeling, the good and bad.  It is not only the joy of something you love, but the satisfaction at having found this joy and called it your own.  Without some examination into what makes us happy and what makes us sad, it is difficult to truly experience those emotions.
When I was younger, I almost enjoyed talking politics; not talking as much as listening and not politics as much as my parents' strongly liberal and shared opinions on various issues.  I used to love hearing about something I didn't know about and making an opinion all on my own.  While my parents would talk I would listen, asking questions here and there to force some clarity into my young mind so I could begin to grapple with the idea by myself.  After considering things, I was always excited to find I had come up with similar answers as my parents.  I was happy that I was a person with an opinion, an opinion like my parents', but moreover I was happy that I was not blindly accepting my parents' words as my own to spit out in response to other children speaking their own parents' words.  Looking inward to come up with our own answers is something we should be excited to do, as it is a prideful thing to be an independent person capable of free thought.

Me

My name is Isabella Rosen.  I have two older brothers, 23 and 20, and one younger sister, 14.  We have all gone to Whitney, my brothers and I starting in the academic center.  My sister just started here as a freshman after going to the academic center at Lane Tech.  One of my brothers goes to Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts and the other went to Reed College and now lives in San Francisco. This summer I did a week long program at Barnard College in New York City and I went to Indonesia with my family, which was really fun. I'm really excited to finally be a senior this year, but also terrified about the entire college application process, which I am yet to begin. I feel really overwhelmed by the whole thing and don't really know how I will make myself do it. I imagine I will need a lot of help. I am excited this year because I'm doing a senior experience during the second semester of this school year and what I want to do is just starting to come together. I found an organization that I want to work with called the UIC Center for Literacy where I will probably help out for the first semester until I turn 18 and am allowed to tutor people who are trying to get their GEDs. I'm kind of nervous about it because I have never done something like it before, but I think I will really enjoy it and I am thinking about being a teacher, but I'm really not sure, and this should give me a hint into what that would be like.