Sophie's World

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1991

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-22

Chapters 23-26

Chapters 27-31

Chapters 32-35

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

What It Means to Be a Philosopher

In Hellenistic traditions, the name “Sophia” refers to the feminine side of God, which embodies wisdom and intelligence. Sophie, a name derived from Sophia, is the name given to the book’s protagonist and the girl who uses her wisdom and intelligence to defy all the laws of nature. In this way, Sophie’s World is a call to women everywhere to embrace their philosophical human nature and rise to the challenges philosophy presents. Before Alberto can arm Sophie with the philosophical knowledge she will one day need to escape the world she is trapped in, he must first explain to her what it means to be a philosopher. His words are clear and capitalized: “THE ONLY THING WE REQUIRE TO BE GOOD PHILOSOPHERS IS THE FACULTY OF WONDER” (17). Of course, it is soon evident there is much more to being a philosopher than this feature, but Alberto insists this is the primary trait from which all other philosophical traits are built. Using a metaphor of a white rabbit in a magician’s hat, Alberto explains to Sophie that there is a sense of astonishment and curiosity at the heart of every philosopher. Philosophers are those with the courage to dare to remain on the tips of the rabbit’s fur, staring directly into the mysteries of life as they once did in childhood. Unfortunately, however, most people do not become philosophers. This is because “long before [a child] learns to think philosophically—the world will have become habit” (18). What this means is that things that have been experienced many times become mundane, and people lose their ability to be awestruck by the complex wonder that surrounds them. People also become closed off to new possibilities, believing things will always be as they have been. Alberto shows through Hume’s philosophy that this is not true. For example, “[I]t is usual to say the stone falls to the ground because of the law of gravitation. But we have never experienced such a law. We have only experienced that things fall” (271). Essentially, there is no guarantee of consistency, and a philosopher must always keep their mind open to the possibility of the white crow.

There are several other secondary traits Alberto insists a philosopher will possess, and he sees these traits in Sophie before they even begin their correspondence. A philosopher must be in constant pursuit of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. How a philosopher pursues these caveats will vary, but each will use reason, observation, dialogue with others, and experience to come to tentative conclusions about the nature of reality. Beginning from a point of absolute zero, a philosopher will assume nothing and reason from the bottom up. He or she may also dissect and analyze writings and societies of the past, the existence and nature of God, natural processes, life, morality, politics, art, or reality itself. A philosopher will also have free will because the existence of reason is what gives people their free will. It is also what leads Sophie and Alberto to be able to develop and exercise their own free will to gain control of their own lives. A philosopher seeks the deep, immutable truths that unite all of history, time, and existence, and “tries to grasp something that is eternal and immutable” (86). Quite significant to the outlook of a philosopher, insists Socrates, history’s earliest Western philosopher, is that “one thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing” (69). This means a philosopher understands his sheer lack of understanding, and all other answers could one day be proven false.

The History of Ideas

Philosophy is built upon a foundation of ideas that date back to the beginnings of human civilization. It can be thought of as a way of life and a way of thinking about various facets of existence. Western philosophy began in ancient Athens, when Socrates stood at the Agora and used reason to persuade people to question their habituated beliefs. Socrates was eventually executed for his unconventional way of being and thinking, and his life would begin a long chain of theories and observations that continue to this day. Sophie’s World begins with a quote from Goethe: “He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth” (preface). This means most people are prone to accepting their reality, thinking little about its nature, and becoming comfortable in their ideas. A philosopher, on the other hand, is someone who utilizes human history to formulate theories about the nature of existence. Alberto’s duty is to instill this value in Sophie, and he tells her so directly: “I will do what I can to acquaint you with your historical roots. It is the only way to become a human being. It is the only way to become more than a naked ape. It is the only way to avoid floating in a vacuum” (161).

“History is the story of the ‘world spirit’ gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value” (360). When Hegel looked back on history, he noticed patterns in the way ideas and theories came to fruition. He saw what he called a “dialectic process” (364) in which theses are presented, challenged with an antithesis, and then a new conclusion combining the best of both is eventually arrived at. Before long, a new thesis comes along to challenge the previous conclusion, and on and on it goes. Hegel believed “the ‘world spirit’ is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself” (360) that grew over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. He compares this idea to the metaphor of a river winding across space and time—one cannot step in the same river twice. Sophie and Alberto go through this very same experience as they discover that they, like anything else in creation, can use reason and the history of ideas to escape the world of the major’s unconscious. Hegel’s ideas were later essentially confirmed when modern astronomers and scientists discovered the Big Bang and proposed evolution. Because all matter originated from the Big Bang, it is all one, and is the same matter that has always existed. Furthermore, evolution allows life to progress along a path toward improvement. This improvement eventually leads to self-awareness, or the awareness of the Big Bang and a human’s awareness of their own conscious and unconscious mind. Hilde’s father illustrates this point further when he points out that “if it’s a clear night, we can see millions, even billions of years back into the history of the universe” (505) due to the passing of starlight across the vast reaches of space. Albert compares this to a feeling of returning home, and it is akin to Plato’s belief that “the soul yearns to fly home on the wings of love to the world of ideas” (89).

The Unity in All Existence

One of the central themes of many philosophical ideas throughout the ages is the unity of existence. Long before Western philosophy began, Buddha proposed the idea of the unity of nature. In ancient Athens, Democritus theorized the building blocks of matter, or atoms, are the universal substance that compose all things. In the Baroque era Berkeley proposed that “everything is due to that spirit which is the cause of ‘everything in everything’ and which ‘all things consist in’” (280). The worlds of Hilde and Sophie have been slowly converging as the chapters progress, but it is at the point when Albert introduces these Baroque ideas that Sophie’s and Hilde’s worlds truly blend. Sophie and Alberto become aware of themselves as characters, and Hilde begins reading the story written about them. By the end of the novel, Sophie and Alberto are in the same world as Hilde and her father and bypassing the laws of nature. The novel ends with the question of what happens when Hilde’s world and Sophie’s world literally collide on the rowboat on the lake.

The novel itself presents a type of unified existence through the overlapping worlds of Sophie and Alberto, the main characters, and their writer, the major and his daughter Hilde. Sophie’s World is a world within a world within a world, and it is impossible to tell what or who is real. Sophie and Alberto reason they are characters in a story and that the major writing about them may also be a character in someone’s book, and so forth. As the writer of their story, the major inserts himself into the story constantly in the form of postcards, magic tricks, and absurdities. The major works for the UN, and he sees it as his mission to unite all of humanity. Similarly, when he sits with Hilde gazing out at the vast universe, he explains the Big Bang and the idea that all things, including themselves, come from the same original source. The “spirit” (280) proposed by Berkeley in the Romantic era and the atoms proposed by Democritus in ancient Athens are both in a sense correct because everything in existence is made up of the same substance, which began as a “primeval atom” (506) weighing billions of tons. In this way, everything that once existed will always exist and has always existed. The major tells his daughter every time they look up at the stars, “in a way, [they] are going home” (505).