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Nothing (Danish: Intet) is a novel for young adults by Danish writer Janne Teller published in 2010. The book is about the meaninglessness of life and has been highly controversial due to its pronounced nihilistic tone.

Plot

In Tæring, a fictive small town in Denmark, the school pupil Pierre Anthon is convinced that there is no meaning in the world and, therefore, no point in doing anything at all. He takes up his post on an old plum tree and confronts his teenage friends with sharp logic arguments that scrutinize the classic consensus on values. His friends get so irritated with Anthon's determination that they decide to put an end to the situation.

After the first attempts to silence him through the use of physical force, the teenagers begin to collect things that have some sort of meaning from an abandoned sawmill in order to refute Anthon's claims. At first, the Mountain of Meaning created by them is made of random and donated contributions. However, it is not long before they demand each other (by naming the next one to contribute) to "sacrifice" extremely meaningful personal things. In the beginning, these things include purely material goods such as a favorite pair of sandals, a beloved pair of boxing gloves or a new racing bicycle. Soon a spiral of psychological violence is installed in the group: the more painful a "sacrifice" is perceived to be, the more painful the next one is required to be. The logics behind this is that a particularly painful "sacrifice" would have a particular, special meaning. Thus, Hussein, the devout Muslim, has to sacrifice his prayer rug and the pious Kai must give up the church crucifix. Elise has to offer up the casket with her recently passed younger brother, Sophie must lose her innocence (there is no detailed description of this scene, but several boys are involved in the process) and Rosa has to sacrifice the life of a stray that had previously joined their group. Thereupon Rosa requests (apparently in agreement with Sophie) the last sacrifice to be Jan-Johan's, who excels at playing the guitar and must suffer the loss of his right index finger now. In a cruel scene described in detail, Sophie chops off the vehemently resisting boy’s finger.

Following these events, it is Jan-Johan who gives away the project. The police and the public become aware of the preceding events, resulting in a worldwide media frenzy around the Mountain and the small town. The Mountain is then being promoted as a work of art and is eventually bought by an American museum for several millions of dollars. At first, the students are quite soothed by the thought that at least now the substantive damages can be compensated.

However, Pierre Anthon still seems unfazed by all of this. He perceives the rapidly disappearing media hype surrounding the Mountain as proof of its insignificance. He argues that even if the Mountain had ever meant something, it would have lost all its value the moment it was sold for money.

Slowly and reluctantly the students start to realize that they have to agree with Pierre Anthon’s opinion. It is only out of defiance that they shut themselves off to his arguments. As soon as they come to realize that their sacrifices were in vain and that the Mountain might have some emotional value, yet no absolute meaning, all the anger (over what they had done to one another) leads to a sturdy fight. In this scene, Pierre Anthon appears scornful and continues to mock the Mountain and all its components. As Pierre Anthon turns his back to leave, all the others unleash their fury on him until he is lying lifeless and gruesomely mangled right next to the Mountain of Meaning. In the same night, the sawmill, the Mountain of Meaning and Pierre Anthon’s body burn to the ground. The disputed pupils are also avoided by others in the future. Sofie, who has been severely traumatized and is now completely emotionally cold, is sent to a closed institution.

Characters

Agnes

Agnes is the first-person narrator of the novel. She is 12 years old and in 7th grade of a school in Tæring. While she seems nice and compassionate at the beginning, she becomes increasingly heartless after her own sacrifice and tries to consciously hit the sore spots of her classmates with further demands. She is the driving force behind the decisive initiatives for the "increase in meaning". Agnes is the first to demand a good that at least cannot be replaced identically, by claiming her classmate Gerda's hamster as a victim. In addition, she is present at the procurement of the coffin and makes the call which gets the world press involved. However, she later realizes that the situation is getting out of hand and tries in vain to prevent further victims. In the end, however, she justifies the use of force against Pierre Anthon by stating that he was to blame for everything.

Pierre Anthon

Son of a computer technician, Pierre Anthon is a former student of class 7a, who dropped out of school due to lack of interest. It is he who denies meaning to the values of his peers and inspires them to take action to collect meaning. However, he is not interested in the Mountain of Meaning. Only when Agnes tells him about the fight in the sawmill does he look at it, but denies it any meaning, whereupon the situation gets out of control and all the others wreak their held back anger on him. His body burns with the entire sawmill the following night.

Elise

Elise feels unloved by her parents because her younger sick brother Emil got more parental love and care than her before he died at the age of two. Ole challenges her to sacrifice her brother's coffin. Cinderella, the dog of a recently deceased man, follows the adolescents to the graveyard and from then on lies on Emil’s coffin. Elise starts to like Cinderella and takes a walk with her every evening. Later when Rosa, who is not able to see blood, gets challenged by Kai to sacrifice Cinderella‘s head, it means a bigger sacrifice for Elise than it is for Rosa.

Lady Werner

Lady Werner likes using French words. He has to give up his diary which is an important part of his life. After that, he asks Anna-Li to give up her certificate of adoption.

Author's style

Janne Teller mostly uses past tense when the first-person narrator Agnes reports the events. The dialogues are especially characterized by colloquial language. However, the vocabulary is generally not very varied which is linked to the age of the characters. Therefore, their idiolects can be characterized as youth language. Teller makes the typed characters conspicuous through assigning them adjectives (e.g the devout Kai). Throughout the description of the narrator, several parataxis are used. The rest of the text gives a mixture of para- and hypotaxis. These are interrupted at some parts by asyndetic sentences. This is due to the conceptual use of oral language and that, for instance, is why some sentences start with the conjunction "and". In this book Teller uses numerous figures of speech such as anaphora, climax as well as anti-climax and she also operates with onomatopeia.

Reception

There has been controversial discussions about the novel since the Danish edition was published in 2000. The novel caused a scandal in Denmark and was banned temporarily from Danish schools. Nevertheless, Janne Teller has been honored several times for this book.

The premiere performance of the stage version of the novel by Andreas Erdmann was performed at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus on 13 October 2011 and afterwards in numerous other German theaters as well.

Our last comments

I translated "der fromme Kai" as "pious Kai" and used the word "devout" in the previous expression "devout Muslim" in my part (plot). Shall we change it here for consistency reasons to "pious" or would you argue that "devout" is a better translation? If so, I will change my part :D. - CoffeeOnSkis

I liked that you used two different adjectives TranslateAllTheThings