LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Candide: Doctor Pangloss
built 640 days ago
While the inexperienced Candide is an optimistic Everyman, Martin is a pure philosophic pessimist. Martin is as unaware of good as Pangloss is unaware of evil. Martin misses the point that there is some good in the world, while Candide cannot understand the presence of evil. (Mason, 60)
Source:
The children's tutor, Pangloss, is a doctor of philosophy who teaches Candide and Cunegonde that there is no effect without a cause. Candide has long since had a crush on Cunegonde but is too shy to act on it. Instead the young man concentrates on his studies.
Source:
Candide first opened on Broadway as a musical on December 1, 1956. The premiere production was directed by Tyrone Guthrie and conducted by Samuel Krachmalnick. The sets and costumes were designed by Oliver Smith and Irene Sharaff, respectively.[1] It was choreographed by Anna Sokolow. It featured Robert Rounseville as Candide, Barbara Cook as Cunegonde, Max Adrian as Dr. Pangloss, and Irra Petina as the Old Lady. While this production was a box office disaster, running only two months for a total of 73 performances, much of the score was recorded on an original cast album, which became a cult hit and kept the memory of the show alive. Hellman's libretto had been criticized in a The New York Times review as being too serious.
Source:
Unaware of what misfortunes had befallen his mistress and friends, Candide escaped from the army and continued his wanderings. At last he sailed for Portugal, but his ship was wrecked in a terrible storm in the Lisbon harbor. The fortunate survivor was washed up on shore, more dead than alive, just in time to witness a great earthquake that destroyed the city and left 30,000 inhabitants dead. Wandering among the ruins, Candide began to wonder what could be the good in such calamities, when he suddenly came face to face with his former master Dr. Pangloss, picking the pockets of the corpses in the street. It was not a pretty face, the good professor having suffered the worst ravages of the syphilis he had contracted from Paquette, but Pangloss pointed out to Candide that this was but the concomittant of love, expressing the greatlaw of compensation. Dr. Pangloss told Candide that along with the rest of the baronial family his beloved Cunegonde was dead- raped and
Source:
Candide learned his optimism from Dr. Pangloss, a caricature of Newton’s rival, the seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (they invented calculus at the same time and battled for priority). Leibniz is credited by modern philosophers and cosmologists for originating the many-worlds hypothesis. He argued that God, in the act of creating the universe, had many worlds to chose from and, being omniscient and all that, picked the best possible world from the available choices. It is questionable whether Pangloss is an accurate parody of Leibniz or, more likely, of Leibniz’s zealous disciple, Christian Wolff, who did much to damage Leibniz’s reputation by simplifying his mentor’s thinking. Be that as it may, Candide lives under the tutelage of Pangloss in a richly appointed, rural German paradise—until he is kicked out.
Source:
........After Candide begs James to help Pangloss, James takes the doctor in and pays for his medical treatment. Pangloss recovers after suffering the loss of only an eye and an ear. James then hires him as a bookkeeper and takes him and Candide on a business trip to Lisbon, Portugal. During their sea voyage, James falls overboard and drowns, and the ship sinks. Candide and Pangloss ride a plank to shore. After their arrival, an earthquake strikes, leveling most of the city and killing thirty thousand residents.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Doctor Pangloss