SUMMARY
Romanticism
wakes up the next morning, eats, and begins to read. returns home and learns that her mother has invited Joanna and her parents over. Joanna and Sophie create an invitation to her birthday party, which is to be a "philosophical garden party." Joanna's parents decide it looks interesting and ask to come. On Tuesday, calls and tells Sophie he has been working on their plan. It is easier to work when is focused on Sophie, he says. He points out that her party is scheduled for the same day that Hilde's father is supposed to return from Lebanon. Later that afternoon they meet and Alberto talks about ##Romanticism# which centered in Germany. The Romantic period was characterized by a worship of the individual and freedom. Romantics felt that art was humanity's greatest expression of freedom. One of the Romantics he described was engaged to a girl named Sophie who died four days after her 15th birthday, something that scares Sophie. The Romantics saw nature as a world spirit, and this was the view of Schelling, the greatest philosopher of the time. After Universal Romanticism, this earlier phase of Romanticism, came National Romanticism, which was concerned with history, language, and culture of the people. Fairy tales and folk songs became important. Writers would write without knowledge of all that they wrote and then at a certain moment directly intervene and retake control of their own story.
Suddenly Albert Knag begins having Alberto call for a new section and tell Sophie that she should not worry about dying because there are clearly several chapters left in their story. Aladdin, who has a message from Albert Knag in his lamp, visits them. Alberto says that they are inside Hilde's father's mind and that he is working hard on their story so he cannot sleep. Then he tells Sophie that he was not really speaking but that Albert Knag directly dictated the words. Now they are sure that they exist in a book written by Hilde's father. Alberto calls upon Hilde to rebel against her father. Then he points out that Hilde and her father could be inside of someone else's mind, someone who is writing a book about Hilde's father writing a book. Sophie points out that even that author could be in the mind of someone else, and Alberto says that he must have had them discuss that option because the book is really a textbook on philosophy.
Hegel
Hilde decides she will teach her father a lesson, and then she reads on. ##Hegel# Sophie learns, believed the world spirit was just the sum of human interactions. He thought truth was subjective and that human reason changed each generation. Thoughts must be judged in their context, and right and wrong change accordingly. But human knowledge is always increasing through history, so history is progressive. He also believed that thinking evolves dialectically—one thought leads to its opposite and then we combine the two thoughts to form a new idea that contains the best elements of both. Hegel also believed in the community over the individual and felt that language forms people, rather than vice versa. The world spirit realizes itself in three increasing stages—in the individual it is the subjective spirit, in the community the objective spirit, and in art, religion, and philosophy it is the absolute spirit. Philosophy is the greatest form of knowledge because it involves the world spirit reflecting on itself.
ANALYSIS
The philosophy lessons and the plotline of the novel have become so intertwined that at this point it is difficult to separate them. Gaarder illustrates the philosophy of the Romantic period and of Hegel by using examples of what is described. Alberto tells Sophie that Romantic authors often felt that their books were writing themselves but that at certain moments they would blatantly exert their own power as authors. Immediately afterward, Gaarder begins doing the same, on several levels. We feel that Albert Knag is showing off his power by making Alberto say certain things and also causing section breaks to appear, but we are also made aware that Gaarder is behind everything. The fact that the author sometimes loses control of the work is interesting on two levels. On the one hand, it suggests that somehow Sophie and Alberto may really be able to do something that Albert Knag is not completely aware of. But that fact really suggests that authors sometimes feel as if books write themselves. When we write, we are all aware that often the words that come out seem very different from the thoughts we were trying to express. Sometimes authors state that their characters take on a life of their own. The author's mind has complete control over the characters, but perhaps the author does not always have complete control over his mind. In fact, this is not just true about written work.
It also happens that when we speak we are often unsureabout what we are going to say until after we have said it. If what we say orwrite comes from our minds then this simply means that we are not conscious ofall that is going on inside our minds. But this is very important, and Gaardermakes us keenly aware of this fact. It is likely that when writing this book hehad a general idea of what he was going to write but much of it must have beenwritten spontaneously. We edit our writing to attempt to make clearer what wemean, but it is possible that some thoughts are not even communicable. That is,perhaps some of the things that we think of cannot be spoken or written downwithout losing something critical. Given that communication works so well ingeneral, it is unlikely that many things are incommunicable, but it ispossible. The part where Sophie suggests that even the author of Albert's bookcould be a character in another book is important not because it snuck intoGaarder's writing but because it was deliberate. Furthermore, Gaarder shows ushow much a book is an interaction between author and reader. We can findamusing the fact that the characters in the book are aware of that interaction,but still the interaction itself is important. We should always be aware of thefact that even Sophie's World,instructive as itis, is just a book written by an author who may be a character in someoneelse's book. Gaarder forces us to question everything and we cannot assume thatanything is certain.
