Well-meaning, well-educated, and highly experienced, Zadig will surely be able to make an impact wherever he goes, thus taking a step beyond resigned Candide, who is pleased to just cultivate his own garden after his journey of hilariously brutal disillusionment leads him to give up his naive, optimistic world view. 'Partons, et voyons à quoi me réserve ma triste destinée.' At the end of his bizarre adventure and learning journey, he faces hardship whichever direction he chooses, but he keeps moving nonetheless: He is not concerned with 'winning', but with change for the better, and not only for himself. Zadig shows his strong personality when he continues to work for future projects even as he faces defeat and humiliation. If he wants live up to the ideal he has defined for himself, certain blows have to be accepted. Less funny and picaresque than sweet but helpless Candide, Zadig is more of a true leader, a person who takes responsibility seriously and strives to make a real change in the world. If even non-existent creatures are threatening his happiness, what makes him continue fighting? 'Tout me persecute dans ce monde, jusqu'aux êtres qui n'existent pas.' Hardly ever successful against the rest of the world, he complains: He is up against greed, envy, corruption, lust and hypocrisy, always trying his best to support human rights and general justice himself. Zadig is born to suffer, being cursed with a 'beau naturel fortifié par l'éduaction', thus an odd man out in a society where the majority of people are both mean-spirited and stupid.

In fact, Zadig is a thinly disguised philosophical satire on Voltaire's own environment, addressing all the issues he cared and raged about: nepotism, power balance, sexual exploitation, abuse, medical charlatanism, bizarre traditions, superstition, evidence-based science versus blind faith. Just like contemporary science fiction authors often choose a futuristic, technologically advanced and remote society to describe questions they consider relevant for our own time and place, Voltaire moves his setting to a foreign and ancient culture, but indicates that the adventure story is more than just an action-filled tale of fortune for those who can read between the lines. In fact, Zadig is a th Zadig, according to Voltaire in his preface, is 'un ouvrage qui dit plus qu'il ne semble dire'.

Zadig, according to Voltaire in his preface, is 'un ouvrage qui dit plus qu'il ne semble dire'.

Zadig and voltair