In many cases (though certainly not all), the most influential works of art took the shortest amount of time to produce. Take “Candide”. Voltaire wrote enormous quantities of important work that contributed a lot to the revolutionary times of Europe (and the various European colonies around the world), but this one might be one of the few that today's readers might have even heard of, let alone read. And he finished it in three days. Wow.
Since the work is, first, quite short, and second, popular since its composition, the plot is not at all unknown, but let's go over it quickly. Candide himself gets his name because he's pretty innocent in his ways, and tends to believe whatever he's told (as one with a similar inclination, I sympathize). He grows up in the German town of Thunder-ten-Tronckh under the instruction of the great philosopher Dr. Pangloss, who teaches him that this is the best of all possible worlds and that nothing can be otherwise than what it is. Meantime, Candide lives with the support of the local lord, until he falls in love with the lord's daughter, Cunegonde, and gives her a kiss behind a tree. And he gets kicked right out of the castle.
Just in time, it turns out. Wars commence and Candide learns that both the lord and Cunegonde have been killed in unusually cruel ways. Candide heads out on a series of adventures, which he finds very confusing, because the world he sees is plainly not the best of all possible worlds.
How can anyone even consider that claim? For example, at one point Candide meets Pangloss again and finds his old teacher suffering from venereal disease. But not to worry – Pangloss points out that if it weren't for diseases like his, Europe would not have chocolate or tobacco or a few other things to enjoy, since Columbus picked up all those things (VD included) in the new world. Um...right.
Like a lot of early literature, “Candide” is pretty episodic, which can be a little distracting. On the other hand, the novel does wrap up most of its loose ends, although not in the usual happily-ever-after way. At least Candide comes to a different, and much more effective, personal philosophy. Instead of “This is the best of all possible worlds,” he now says “We should cultivate our garden.” Which is going to keep him and his in a much more relaxed and contented lifestyle, I think you'll agree, especially once you find out just how he comes to that garden and learns to cultivate it.
In his literary work (or at least in this one), Voltaire emphasized wit and irony, in which his characters make themselves ridiculous simply by living according to the principles they've been taught. Candide, for example, runs across Cunegonde's brother a couple of times very far from home. He manages to rescue this brother from slavery and treat him well, and this brother treats him well too, until Candide declares his intention to marry Cunegonde, at which point the brother instantly forbids him to do so because Candide is a commoner. Voltaire barely needs even to comment on that.
In other words, Candide gets in frequent trouble because he lives in a society and a world in which all men are emphatically not created equal. In other works, Voltaire specifically advocated civil and human rights, but here he doesn't really have to. Instead, he gives us a good, kind, innocent man in a world without civil and human rights, and leaves us to draw our own conclusions. The rest of his work, brilliant as it doubtless was, is commentary on that basic idea.
Benshlomo says, In confronting evil, try poking fun at it – that will probably work very well.
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