The ending of Sophie´s World by Jostein Gaarder?

Question

What did you think of the ending?

To be absolutely honest, I didnt understand it. I loved the book, but I found the ending starting from Sophie´s birthday party a huge dissapointment. It seemed to me that Gaarder simply got tired from writing and wanted to end the book, so he wrote out some rubbish in 5 minutes.

Or did I miss out some deeper significance hidden in the ending?

Answer 1

Maybe he was saying something about epistemology (the study of "what can we know?")--like how can any of us know that we really exist in the way we think we do?  We believed Sophie was real, but found out she was a character--how do we know that we are real?  Maybe there is more to idealism like Berkeley's (or other philosophical ideas) than common sense tells us?  I guess the whole point is to get the reader to question his/her usual ideas about reality, certainty, knowledge, etc.

But yes, I was also disappointed at the end.  It seemed like a letdown.