More Than Words

So I am sitting at my desk and I am reading Voltaire Candide, as I pass page by page I encounter with some words to which I have no idea of their meaning, hence I had to use the dictionary and my knowledge on word context to find the meaning on the word and its effect on the sentence. The word to which I had to do the most effort to understand was:

Ghastly- “Candide was moved more by compassion than by horror at the sight of this ghastly scarecrow, and gave him the two florins he had received from James, the honest Anabaptist.” (28) The first think I did when I saw this word in this sentence was to look up the definition. And this is what I found: 1 a : terrifyingly horrible to the senses : FRIGHTENING b : intensely unpleasant, disagreeable, or objectionable
2 : resembling a ghost(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghastly)

As I read this I figured that it was a negative adjective. That it was describing something in this case the scarecrow in a pessimistic way. Then after looking the definition I did a sentence analysis and first realized how the author said that candied was more moved by compassion than by horror, this to me meant that when he saw it, the scarecrow had more than just a direct and shocking reaction instead it had a deep reply and in a way with sorrow. Candide felt sorry for the scarecrows state. As a matter of fact Candide felt so sorry for him that he even gave him 2 florins, which were the gold at that time. These florins represented a lot of money which makes us realize that this scarecrow was in real needy conditions.

As I keep on reading I find that this scarecrow is Pangloss, Candide’s tutor. And maybe because it was the tutor Candide felt more compassion and was so shocked in seeing him in such a terrifying condition.