Sophie`s World Critical Essay

Philosophy 101 Mr. Trembley While reading Sophie’s World Jostein Gaarder identifies and tackles large philosophical questions. Using Sophie as the “fresh” child mind, Gaarder attempts to portray how a young mind would react to large philosophical questions.

By the time I got to page 13 in the text, I noticed that the major philosophical questions were simply stated by the mysterious teacher of Sophie. One major question that Sophie asks and tries to answer is “who are you? At first, on page 3, Sophie blatantly focuses on the physicality of the question. She is the girl staring back at her self-reflected image on the mirror. She then concluded by saying “you are me,” and “I am you,” to her mirror image. Once again, it was a very obvious and physical truth in regards to who she was. However, by page 7 she takes a more philosophical approach and understands that there are many levels after she ponders about it more. After pondering, she essentially concludes that the questions are riddles.

Yet, coming from narrator verbatim, “For the first time in her life she felt it wasn’t right to live in the world without at least inquiring where it came from. ” She went from a mentality of specific perspective to understanding the general concept that finding a philosophical answer isn’t the purpose…but pondering and asking questions about who she was and where the world came from was more beneficial. In my perspective, the acknowledgement of these philosophical questions is a massive step for Sophie.I definitely agree with Sophie because sometimes the questions are very annoying, because no one will really know the answers to the questions the teacher asked her. The narrator states on page 7 that the questions “jolted Sophie out of her everyday existence and suddenly brought her face to face with the great riddles of the universe. ” I find this particularly interesting because to me the questions asked by philosophers are not meant to be confusing, time wasting questions. Instead, the questions spark of wonder that leads to creative, varied perspectives on extremely large questions.