Review Text : Sophie's World

Review Text:

SOPHIE’S WORLD

What do you feel if you got a letter written by stranger? What do you feel when someone asked you about ‘who are you’ and ‘from where did the world come’? What do you feel when someone send you a birthday letter but it’s not a letter for you? And what do you feel if these things happened in your life? Confused? That’s what Sophie’s feeling.

Sophie’s World which the Norwegian book titled Sofie’s Verden, is written by Jostein Gaarder. It is a novel about Sophie who got a strange letter from stranger and it taught her about philosophy. Since the first time she got the letter, everything’s just like puzzling in her mind. Everyday she got a little white envelope with weird questions inside and a big brown envelope with the explanation about the answer which presented with the stories of the philosopher around the world such as Socrates, Plato, etc.

Beside the strange philosopher’s letter, she always get something which is Hilde Moller Knag’s stuff. It’s make her more confused because it’s mysteriously appear in her house. Such as Hilde’s birthday letter from her dad, her scarf, her bracelet, and the thing that make Sophie really confused and scared is when she go to a house in the forest, she stare at a mirror and the reflection of her is winking on her. And she found a wallet, and there’s an identity card of Hilde, but the picture of Hilde looks like her.

Although her life went confusing since the orientation of the story, she didn’t tell her mother about these weird things. Every part of the story is like a mystery which had to be solved. But from the middle of the story, Sophie get the clue to solve it. But the end of the story was unpredictable.

Jostein Gaarder’s book had a special character, which is had a ‘story in a story’. And he can combine philosophy which many people think it’s a complicated thing to learn with a novel which many people loved to read it. So if you want to study basic philosophy, you can read Gaarder’s books especially Sophie’s World. When we read the story, we can feel like we are Sophie who learned to be a philosopher.

It’s had been filmed in Norwegia, but it’s a little bit far from the book because there’s an additional figures in the film which made Sophie portrayed as a nerd girl become naughty. So this book is highly recommended. But it’s alright if you want to enjoy the movie. So, “It’s a philosophy course. Be careful”.