Voltaire makes fun of this absurd optimism by drawing it to its extremes. Both books set about poking fun at a certain world-view - in Voltaire’s case it is pathological optimism that states that the death of thousands of people in an earthquake in Lisbon is justified as God’s will. “Pessoptimism” is like Saeed’s mother’s declaration that her son who died in a crane accident, his body smashed on rocks at Haifa’s coast, tell her daughter-in-law, “It’s best it happened like this and not some other way!” Maybe a pessimist would have said, “What do you expect? I’ve always known he would die a horrible death!” Or an optimist: “Well at least we know he’s at peace!” As is obvious, Habiby’s novel is like Voltaire’s Candide. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, “the best of all possible worlds” nor is it as gloomy as Schopenhauer’s philosophical pessimism. It’s his family’s way of thinking about the world, a little bit of optimism mixed with a touch of pessimism. As a contradistinct Candide, Saeed calls himself and his family pessoptimists. Saeed’s life is one of inconsequence and random opportunism. Saeed eventually gains an advantage, working for the Israelis and living in Israel He falls in love with Yuaad, whose name means “it shall be repeated.” He loses her apparently, she dies after been deported by the Israelis. In The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist by Emile Habiby, a Palestinian illegally gains re-entry into Israel after the deportation of Palestinian refugees in 1948.
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