Sophie's World

Sophie’s World is a novel that, like the characters within it, becomes aware of itself throughout the course of its events. Sophie and Alberto eventually figure out they are characters in a story by using the philosophical reasoning their writer has given them. From there, they reason there may be another writer outside of the major’s world writing a story about him. In fact, they are correct: That person is Gaarder. Alberto and Sophie take it further still and wonder if there is another writer outside of that one. Ultimately, they use their knowledge of fairy tales, narrative, philosophy, and the unconscious mind to escape what has become their prison.

The importance of the story as a mechanism for the creation of worlds is central in Sophie’s World. Not only are Sophie and Alberto fictional characters in a story written by another character within the book, but they also encounter countless fictional characters from other stories. These characters serve as catalysts for philosophical thought or as demonstrations of the ideas Alberto imparts to Sophie. For example, when Sophie is to learn about Marx and the conflict between classes, she meets Ebenezer Scrooge, who refuses to feed a starving matchstick girl. Sophie remarks that “after meeting Scrooge and the little match girl, [she has] no problem understanding what Marx meant” (388). By then, Sophie and Alberto fully understand the plot devices employed by the major are there to either teach them or fool them, or sometimes both. When Alberto and Sophie discuss Darwin, they are first interrupted by Noah, who presents them with a photo of the animals he saved from the flood. The major often inserts these characters to attempt to throw Alberto and Sophie off their philosophical journey, as he seems to have an inkling that it will eventually lead to their freedom. Other times, he uses them merely to demonstrate the absurd, such as when he inserts Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters into a scene of them walking alongside the lake together. After Alberto and Sophie escape the major’s imagination and step into his world, the folk tales from antiquity and the fairy tales of the Romantic era are proven to be sentient and eternal beings living in a type of shadow world. Sophie and Alberto realize can live eternally there too, and the story they are from is immortal and can be revisited any time. Sophie takes comfort in knowing she can see her mother, friends, garden, and pets again.

The white rabbit and the magician is a metaphor Alberto develops for the universe itself and the philosophers within it, who ask the fundamental questions about their universe’s nature. The chapter that explains this metaphor in detail begins with a quote: “The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder” (12). In a letter from Alberto to Sophie, Alberto explains what he means by this metaphor and the faculty of wonder. The magician Alberto refers to is the force behind all things. He is the first-mover, the world spirit, God, nature, the Big Bang, or all of these things combined. The magician’s trick is to pull a rabbit out of a “top hat” (12). The top hat is a symbol for the very fabric of existence, the “earthly substance” (506) that makes up all things. Contained within it is a rabbit, and this rabbit is a symbol for life and the universe that contains the world Sophie and Alberto and the reader on the outside knows.

The task of a philosopher, as Alberto says, is to always maintain the “faculty of wonder” (17) children possess but tend to lose as they grow up. It is a way of seeing the world as if nothing and everything is strange and wonderful at the same time. Each phenomenon, whether experienced once or a hundred times, is experienced with rapture and “astonishment” (19). For a person to be a philosopher and want to ask the fundamental questions in what lay hidden there, they must refrain from habituating to the world around them. Alberto compares this process to being born on the tip of the rabbit’s fur, ready to stare directly into the mysteries of the magician. However, as people age, they tend to crawl into the depths of the rabbit’s fur and never come back out. This is because it is comfortable and safe there, and “although philosophical questions concern us all, we do not all become philosophers” (19). Alberto concludes his lesson on the white rabbit and the magician by reminding Sophie she is special, and he wants nothing more than to prevent her from “[joining] the ranks of the apathetic and the indifferent” (20).

Nature appears throughout Sophie’s World as both a symbol of the beauty and wonder of existence and as a motif that propels the plot forward at several points. The first chapter is titled “Garden of Eden” (3), and it is just that—Sophie comes into existence on the first page of the novel. The garden in her backyard becomes her haven, and the world she lives in—what Alberto calls her Garden of Eden—is one she is forced to eventually leave. This happens on the night of her “Garden Party” (465). Sophie is a philosopher before she ever meets Alberto, and this is mainly shown in the way she observes and appreciates nature. One of the telling traits of a philosopher, argues Alberto, is a person who sees the amazingly complex and mysterious life that surrounds them. A philosopher never grows habituated to their life by crawling deep into the rabbit’s fur; instead, they keep both eyes wide open to the wonder surrounding them and always want to learn more about it. Much of the setting of the novel takes place either in Sophie’s garden or around the lake at the major’s cabin.

Nature has been a part of philosophy since the earliest days in ancient Athens when Plato wrote the Myth of the Cave (89) and Aristotle categorized flora, fauna, and humans into categories based on his own naturalistic observations. As Sophie discovers the philosophical theories of the past, she has an ethereal moment when she sits in her den reading a letter from Alberto, and “The sun […] was peeping over the horizon just as she was reading how one man clambered out of the cave and blinked in the dazzling light outside” (92). Nature symbolizes the unity of all things, including the experiences of the philosophers of the past with Sophie’s current experiences as she reads about them. The idea of unity through nature is fully demonstrated in the final chapters as Sophie and Alberto, and later Hilde and her father, discuss the Big Bang and the “primal substance” all things, including themselves, stem from. Natural philosophy came into full fruition after a long stint in the dark through the Middle Ages. In the Renaissance, when “the three diverging streams from antiquity joined into one great river” (196), people took up the ideals of Aristotle and began seeking to observe nature using their senses and the instruments they created. Pivotal philosophers and astronomers, such as Newton, Copernicus, and Galileo changed the way people viewed the universe and their place in it when they proposed the theories of gravity, heliocentrism, and the law of inertia. Natural philosophy was in essence the first tangible step toward a scientifically-based society and a foundation for knowledge outside the realm of superstition and pure reason. It paved the way for scientists such as Darwin and Freud to study and propose the theories of evolution and the unconscious mind.