After many
horrific, over-the-top adventures traveling the world that Pangloss has taught him is "the
best of all possible worlds," the naivebegins to gain wisdom and rethink his tutor's
contention that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Having experienced a
panorama of slavery, warfare, rape, dismemberment, execution, torture, disembowelment, and other
such horrors, Candide, while staying in Turkey, happens to have dinner at the house of an Old
Turk. Candide marvels at the plentitude of the dinner, with its several sherbets and other good
food. He assumes the Turk must be very rich, but the Turk tells him he and his daughters live
abundantly by cultivating only twenty acres. They keep themselves busy, are content with what
they have, and lead a comfortable life.
Candide ponder this and decides that
"cultivating one's garden" is a better option than trying to make one's fortune in the
wider world. By "cultivating one's garden," Candide means more than just planting and
tending to a literal garden of plants. His point is that one should surround oneself with family
and close friends and then pursue one's talents. "Cultivating one's garden" is
developing one's gifts. An individual should keep busy and do what they do best. The wider world
can take care of itself. One does more for the world and stays safer, Candide implies, by
concentrating on quietly developing one's own gifts, rather than trying to make an egoistic mark
on the world.
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