Candide's Punishments, Do They Fit the Crime?

From the beginning of the book up until Chapter 19, we've seen a shift in Candide's behavior. The only reason I wouldn't call him bad is because I don't think he is aware of his behavior and how they way he is acting has shifted from being that blank slate in the beginning. When Candide and Cacambo reach Eldorado, they are suddenly living in a world that has almost everything they could want. The only thing Candide was missing was his love. I support his decision to leave Eldorado to go find Cunegonde but the way Voltaire described their plan of departure made them seem as if they were leaving because of greed. While I was reading about how Candide and his servant left Eldorado with tons of riches, I simply knew it couldn't end well. It was almost as if the greed had overtaken their critical thinking skills. It doesn't even make sense in my head to assume that all these sheep with riches and food would survive the treacherous journey from Eldorado.

By the time the two reach Surinam and encounter the negro, I was hoping that all that Candide has experienced would make him less naive. Just seeing how the negro was treated should have sent up a red flag before he even entered Surinam. At this point in the book Candide has turned into someone who thinks he can just throw money at all of his problems and without realizing it he is setting himself up as a target. When he encounters Mr. Vanderdender it is as if he has no regard for the value of money and in one sense it is beautiful that he loves Cunegonde enough for this but at the same time he's dealing with someone who he has seen isn't the nicest man and the instant I say that Vanderdender was the one that would take Candide to Buenos Ayres, I knew he would lose his riches.

I think Candide deserved to be stolen from and to be fined the way he was when he went to the judge. In my opinion he was spinning out of control and as much as I wanted him to learn his lesson, he didn't and continued to throw money at people to be his companion on his journal. The constant unsettling twist throughout the story is that while Candide is committing all these moral evils, he isn't aware of the way it looks from the outside and maybe the point that Voltaire is trying to make is that those who commit evils may not see them as evils, thus creating this imperfect world were everyone's views are different and you can punish the wrong do-ers and they still don't learn their lesson.