uestion whether or not this is the best world possible and the validity of providence.Candide is further influenced by Martin, who portrays the ideas of Voltaire and criticizes the beliefs that Candide holds. He does not believe that everything happens for the best, but he believes in the exact opposite. He does not agree that earthquakes, illness, and death are all for the betterment of society and people, instead he sees them for what they are, bad events that wreck peoples lives, not for the better, but for the worse. These things do not happen to create well in the world but they occur because of the existence and power of evil. Candide and Martin talk about providence and they disagree often. As they watch a boat sink and all the inhabitants die, Candide believes that the sinking of the entire boat was good because it punished the Captain for his bad deeds. Martin answers, but was it necessary that the other passengers on his ship should perish too? God punished the thief and the devil punished the others.2 Voltaire uses Martin to expose the faults in Pangloss theory that providence is in control of everything that happens. Rather than believing that everything happens for the good, he instead sees evil as having the most power in this world.In Survival in Auschwitz, Levi sees many things happen that he cannot answer with the idea of providence. The fact that the Germans killed thousands of women, children and men, showed him that not everything happens for the best. He sees chance as the deciding factor in many of the prisoners fates and that by walking down the wrong side of the convoy, death could be the next step. Death does not occur for the best, and providence does not allow death to be good. Levi states, It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term extermination camp, and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: to lie on the bottom.3 The fate of thousands of the people...
