What happens in Chapter 16 of Candide?
Fleeing the Jesuit colony after Candide accidentally kills the Commandant—his old schoolmate, the Baron—Candide and Cacambo venture further into the South American wilderness. They come across two naked young women who are being chased; however, it soon becomes clear that they are actually being pursued by two monkeys who are their lovers, not their predators. Candide, always eager to follow Pangloss's teachings, shoots the monkeys, expecting the women to express gratitude. Instead, they cry deeply over the dead animals. Cacambo, the streetwise half-breed valet, explains that in some cultures, relationships between humans and monkeys are perfectly normal—a shocking revelation that shakes Candide's neat European beliefs. The two are then captured by the Oreillons, a tribe that strips and binds them, preparing a pot to boil and eat them. Cacambo, fluent in the local language, negotiates their release by clarifying that Candide is not a Jesuit but rather someone who has killed one—a distinction that satisfies the Oreillons. The chapter wraps up with the two men freed, the tribe celebrating, and Candide, in his usual naive fashion, marveling that natural law and instinct can somehow create a form of rough justice.
Analysis
Voltaire fills Chapter 16 with the sharp satire that characterizes Candide at its best. The monkey-lovers episode directly mocks the Noble Savage myth and the philosophical optimism that Pangloss has drilled into Candide. Instead of producing gratitude, the hero's chivalric intervention only brings grief, challenging the assumption that European moral categories can be applied universally. Voltaire’s comic timing is precise—the reveal of the monkeys' role is held back just long enough for the reader to share Candide's misunderstanding, then delivered in a single blunt sentence.
The Oreillons sequence takes the satire to a darker level. Cannibalism here isn't just for shock value; it reflects the institutional violence that Candide has witnessed during Lisbon's auto-da-fé and within the Jesuit colony. The tribe's logic—spare the man who killed a Jesuit—is shown to be morally coherent, even commendable, which is exactly Voltaire's point: the "savages" operate with a clearer transactional ethics than the civilized institutions of the Church and State. Cacambo serves as a narrative device as much as a character, consistently rescuing Candide with his multilingual skills and practicality when Panglossian philosophy fails completely.
The tonal shifts are quick and intentional. The chapter begins in a pastoral tone, shifts to farce with the weeping women, darkens to real menace at the cooking pot, and then concludes in a kind of absurd relief. The rapidity of these changes itself makes a statement: Voltaire refuses to allow any single moral perspective to settle, keeping the reader as uncertain as Candide himself.
Key quotes from Chapter 16
“Candide was so astonished and confused that he did not reflect that this was perhaps the effect of pure nature.”
Candide's reaction after learning the women mourned the monkeys as lovers, exposing the limits of his Pangloss-trained worldview.
“Let us eat Jesuit, let us eat Jesuit!”
The Oreillons' chant as they prepare to cook Candide, reducing European religious identity to a culinary category and equating missionary violence with edible prey.
“You see, my dear master, how this country is reasonable; customs are customs.”
Cacambo's dry summation after securing their release, ironically endorsing the tribe's logic as no less rational than European convention.
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- Oreillons
- A fictional tribe of indigenous people in South America depicted in the novel, who capture Candide and Cacambo and nearly eat them, believing them to be Jesuits.