Report on "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder

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                                     Sophie’s World Essay

Sophies world by Jostein Gaarder is a story of a fourteen year old girl, Sophie Amundsen, who lives in Norway with her mother and her animals in her garden. She is soon joined by the mysterious Alberto Knox, first through correspondence, and then linked by a full-scale philosophy course chosen her for to explain the secrets of life. In Sophie’s World, Jostein Gaarder twines the history of philosophy with the supenatural actions of Alice in Wonderland. While different people might have different ideas about the book, I believe               Sophies world has achieved the right to be a novel and a history of philosophy, with its detailed characterisation, plot, setting and philosophical ideas that it has used that engage the reader.

The main plot begins when Sophie comes home from school to find a white envelope addressed to her asking “who are you? Where does the world come from?” This begins her thinking about the major questions of existence, and then the philosophy course began. Alberto is not physically revealed until late in the first quarter of the novel. Through the second quarter of the novel So Sophie starts taking the philosophy course and odd things such as talking dogs occur. Sophie finds items, and postcards addressed to Hilde which extremely baffles her. While the reader is digesting the vast information presented in the philosophy course, they are also trying to piece together all of the odd happenings. Who is Hilde? What does she have to do with Sophie? This creates a sense of mystery in their mind, which can also lead to the fact that Sophies World is a mystery novel.  Hilde is introduced in the second half of the novel. The story starts by completely switching from Sophie’s view, to Hilde’s view. Hilde’s father sends her a birthday present from where he is stationed – a novel called Sophie’s World. He has written it for her. The clues that were difficult to understand for Sophie and Alberto are clear for Hilde. The plot shifts from wondering who Hilde is, to Hilde noticing that the items Sophie found are indeed missing from her room. Sophie, Alberto, and Hilde fight to stop The Major from controlling the characters in Sophie’s world. The Major takes on a god figure and proves to be the god of the book. The novel becomes focused on how to escape The Major’s grasp and as to not be trapped in the pages of the story forever. The story ends when Sophie and Alberto escape and end up in an imaginary world away from the majors eyes, plotting to take their revenge.The plot is completely unpredictable, with twist and turns of reality that stretch imaginations to the end limits. The thing that is hard to believe in the book is that Sophie’s mother letting her daughter spend a lot of time with a unknown 50 yr old man, which makes it very childish. Even with this flaw, it is the plot, what makes Sophies World an extraordinary mysterious story that is both engaging and entertaining.

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Jostein Gaarder was a teacher of philosophy, and in his novel he states, “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.” The novel uses many philosophical theories to teach the readers about the philosophies of life. .” With the story being really complex it gives the reader a key to question their own existence. Are we in a story ourselves? Gaarder is acting as Alberto in the first half of the story, asking the right questions, posing the right situations, to force us to think outside of our comfort zone. Large concepts, from the ...

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