Sophie's World

Through daily installments, I recently finished Sophie's World. It was satisfactory as a novel and worked well as a bathroom read. I liked the regular installments of philosophy, and that Jostein Gaarder presented them through a fictional narrative. Unfortunately, the narrative felt more contrived than many of the philosophies in the book.

That being said, I will now take issue with the plot in a spoiling way - though I argue that this is no real loss to the reader. It's a philosophical story about a girl who realizes that her world isn't really as it seems: not an original plot, nor is it necessarily trite. My issue is with Gaarder's execution of the story. Specifically, Hilde's reaction to Sophie's dilemma.

Hilde's father writes Sophie's World, the text-in-text, as a means of sharing the world of philosophy with his daughter. As such, the text focuses primarily on the lessons that Sophie receives. Characters and plot serve more as medium than substance. So why does Gaarder make Hilde care so much about her father's manipulation of Sophie, and make it a central issue in the book? I, the reader, certainly don't care about the manipulation, nor do I believe that Hilde would react that way. Then again, I only read it while sitting on the toilet