Summary

Chapter XXII starts as spring begins, and Agnes struggles to find joy in it knowing it will end just like everything else does. Sofie is the only student who still yells back and fights Pierre Anthon about his proclamations that the world is meaningless. She tries to get him to see the heap of meaning before it is shipped off to New York, but he continues to refuse. He repeatedly protests that the things they gathered do not actually have any meaning at all, and condescendingly tells her that there would be no use in him going to see it because of that.

In chapter XXIII, Sofie begins “banging her head against the posts..and wanting to climb up onto” the heap of meaning in order to “pull the whole thing apart” (203). She is stopped by Otto and Huge Hans. Sofie is angry...