Nothing for Children

Michael Ende’s phantastic novels are rich in transcultural references to Asian mythologies. This paper begins by reconstructing these traces in his early children’s novels, Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver and Momo, before focusing on The Neverending Story. In The Neverending Story, his opus magnum, Ende draws on Buddhist and Daoist themes to conceive of nothingness in a twofold sense: when written in capital letters, “The Nothing” (Das Nichts) is a threatening force that engulfs the fictive world of Phantasia (Fantásien). Conversely, when written in lowercase letters, “nothing” (nichts) represents the root of human consciousness and imagination, which holds the potential to resist the spread of The Nothing. Ende’s transcultural approach unleashes a critical force by exposing deep-seated pathologies linked to the encroachment of Nothingness, as manifested in the destructive impact of the modern rush toward acceleration, consumerism, and loss of meaning. Ende’s protagonists resist The Nothing with nothing, which is connected to the rediscovery of the human capacities to wish, to name, and to remember.