Dialectics of Distance in Scandinavian YA Literature

Minus Me and Nothing both speak on the ways in which their characters distance themselves from something in the past. Their physical and figurative distances create tension in the novels. In Minus Me, Linda’s past haunts her to some degree. She experiences great shame over how she bullied and humiliated Axel, and seeks to make amends. The church scene sets up her wish for a separation from past events. The church, extremely old and revered, represents the past, and being stuck there terrifies her, as symbolized by the terror she feels at the presence of a statue which looks like her. She, of course, does not know that she has died and is in the process of learning to accept this. She later decides to abandon one past (her parents and home town) to seek out and amend another (Axel). She then comes face to face with her inability to change the past by seeing Axel with his new girlfriend Mia. Even though she is physically near the novel’s human manifestation of Linda’s ruminative past, her distance from it takes hold of the narrative by placing him in the arms of another girl. This distance is one of the things she must acknowledge before understanding the significant events of her pseudo-death dream state. She requires the wisdom to see her distance from it.

In Nothing, a good number of young characters would similarly do better for themselves and others if they were to recognize their distance from their original goal. The worst of their cruelty comes about when they start to drift further and further away from Pierre Anthon. At a point, he goes without mention over a span of several of their “meaningful” challenges. This is the issue with the coffin, the prayer mat, the murder of the dog, the yellow bike, and “the innocence.” All of these things are taken before Pierre Anthon’s name is mentioned again. By then, they’ve already gone too far, and greatly distanced themselves from their goal of getting Pierre Anthon out of the plum tree. Had they been able to recognize their drift from the point of their heap of meaning, they may have been able to slow things down prior to going so far as they did. This is another example of distance and separation that is not so tied up in discussion of the past as Minus Me, though still touches on the same distance that cuts deeper and deeper as time passes.