Does Candide's Punishments Fit His Crimes?

Since the prompt is about Candide,  I assume majority of the class is going to write about whether or not the punishment Candide deserved was just or unjust. Me on the other hand, I want to use another example to try and bring a different perspective into Voltaire's story. The first example I thought of when I thought of punishment was The Scarlet Letter. Just to recap, The Scarlet Letter tells of a young woman, Hester Prynne, who has committed adultery that resulted in her child, Pearl. Her punishment for this crime was to wear a scarlet letter "A" that stood for adultery, every day. When first reading this book, this doesn't seem like much of a punishment. But, we see how hard life is for Hester for the simple fact that everyone knows of her crime.  The belittle her and seclude from everything. Ultimately, we discover that her punishment is not wearing this scarlet letter but in fact be scorned by everyone of her crime/sin. Now to tie this back to Candide. Both of these stories were written a long time ago so punishments that these characters received would of course seem unjust to us now. I believe that these villages and towns placed these punishments so high to scare the citizens into behaving and following the law. When someone did misbehave, like Candide and Hester, they were punished to set an example to everyone else of what could happen to them. One specific example is when Candide was exiled from the castle for messing with Cunegonde. It was interesting to me how Candide was punished for something similar to Hester yet not as extreme and how these values, unlike others in the books, are still withheld today. A lot of countries today are still very strict on keeping marriage the key thing  before anything else. We see this in the United States but it very much so not enforced.

How do I know what I know?

                                    That's a really good question to ponder on. Of course, my parents have helped me learn some things, most of the basic things. Then, everything from middle school till now has been learned through experience. But what about the things I couldn't learn? The things that I just know (or assume) to be true. Things that can't necessarily be explained through science or reasoning. For example, how do I know that doors are supposed to open? My parents never came up to me and said "Look Indigoe, it does this!"
I learned and know they open from seeing it open several times. Or for example, how do I know that people on TV shows are not behind the screen? I actually don't understand that whole technical process but I've known for forever that those people couldn't possibly be in my house. I guess you can say that's just common sense. The more I think about this question, the more confused I get about how exactly I know what I know. It's really hard for me to think about something that I wasn't taught or that I haven't experienced. That seems to be the only two ways in which I've learned what I know today. No one comes out the womb knowing information. We all learn and experience. Even for things that don't make sense or things that our parents go "Because!" to. I'm guessing since it's repeated to us over and over again and since the human race as whole pretty much follows these rules that we register it in our minds of common sense that this has to be right. Thus, we no longer question these things. I'm getting lost in my thoughts now.