The Ugly Truth

"Imagine the situation of a Pope's daughter aged fifteen, who in three months had undergone poverty and slavery, had been raped nearly every day, had seen her mother cut into four pieces, had undergone hunger and war, and was now dying of the plague in Algiers." (Ch. 12)

It shows us the brutality that took place during the time. Voltaire writes this book with a satire tone meaning he is actually mocking war but in many books, even history text books the truth is sometimes omitted so things don’t sound as dreadful as they really are. History always tries to hide the brutality of events, for example the "Masacre de las Bananeras" in Colombia. This was a massive event during the time of all the revolutionary events that were going on during the time. This was when workers asked for a raise to the UFC (united fruit company) and instead of getting a raise they all got killed. The UFC said there were 9 dead people, and newspaper said there were only 32 but today we know there were approximately 3,000 workers that were killed. I think that sometimes the ugly truth is better than a pretty lie.

The quote at the beginning of the entry could easily be the story of a poor Colombian girl, off course with changes, for example it could look like this: “A poor girl aged fifteen, who in three months had undergone poverty and had been raped various times, had seen her mother shot and had undergone hunger, and was now dyeing of disease.” The ugly truth is always staring us in the face but we decide to look away. We read Candide thinking Voltaire is a brute when we experience the same kind of violence decades later.