Remember your first day in seventh grade? Well, thanks to Pierre Anthon, all of his classmates are destined to remember theirs for a very long time. They even have a little souvenir of it in a plastic container that they carry with them into adulthood. On the first day of school, Pierre Anton greets them with the words, "Nothing matters. I have known that for a long time. So nothing is worth doing. I just realized that." As seventh-graders go, Pierre must be one of the saddest, most resigned ever. He has an unusually bleak outlook on life for a seventh grade kid.
Pierre lives in a commune with his father and after his cryptic announcement, walks out of school and returns to the commune, which is at Taeringvej. He decides that he is going to live in a plum tree, with no reported reaction from his father, or any other of the adults for that matter.
A young girl named Agnes is the book's narrator. She describe how she and the rest of the class plan on getting Pierre out of his tree, and back down to join the rest of the class. The best way to deal with him, they feel, is to contradict him, and prove to him that despite what he might think, there are lots of things that matter, and lots of things that are worth doing. This is how the Heap Of Meaning comes to be. each of the class adds something to th pile that means something to them. The Heap of Meaning starts out well, and with good intentions, but descends into something dark and terrible from its innocent beginnings.
The seventh graders gather at an old, disused sawmill, and begin. The first person to step forward with a treasured possession is a kid called Dennis; he gives up his treasured Dungeons and Dragons books. Each person who gives up their favorite thing then gets to nominate the next person to give up their favorite thing, and so on and so on, so after Dennis has given up his books, he nominates his classmate Sebastian, who reluctantly sacrifices his fishing gear. The process rolls along nicely, civilly, with everyone doing exactly what they are supposed to do - give up something and nominate the next child who will do the same.
When Agnes' turn comes, she is irritated by a classmate called Gerda, who announces to all that Agnes loves her new green wedge-heel sandals and should therefore give them up. Agnes is so annoyed that she does something reprehensible; she tells Gerda that because her hamster is her most treasured possession, she should put him on the pile as well. As Agnes well knows, Gerda's hamster is going to be killed in this process. This seems to open the door to a darker and more threatening game. In fact, it is not even a game anymore. Sophie, a pretty girl in the class, gives up the most precious thing to her - her virginity. They carry on until Jon-Johan loses a finger, and runs home to tell his parents what has been going on.
Unlike Pierre Anton's parents, Jon-Johan's are involved and active in their children's lives. Finding that their son now has one less digit than he did when he left for school that morning, they call the police, and tell them to meet them at the sawmill. The media catches wind of the story, and the children's Heap Of Meaning is featured on the television news. The curator of the Museum of Modern Art is watching the news that evening and offers the children over three million dollars for the Heap. It is now considered modern art, a sign of the times. The children accept the money and Pierre Anton tells them that they have proved his point, because if any of the belongings that they had put on the Heap was really and truly meaningful then they would never have been eager to sell it.
The events ot the day are starting to take their toll on some of the class, especially Sophie. She seems to be emotionally unraveling, and it seems to be contagious. In a "Lord Of The Flies-esque" descent into savagery, the rest of class 7-A also seem to be going a little mad, and violence ensues. The kids begin to beat each other up, the bigger ones beating on the smaller ones, in some bizarre demonstration of the survival of the fittest.
Agnes realizes that the only person who can stop this is the person who started it. She gets away from the other kids and begs Pierre Anton to get down from his tree. He agrees, and goes with her to the scene of the brawl where he tells his classmates that they are behaving like idiots. He goes to walk away, and turns his back on them. They have descended into too deep of a level of savagery to go back. The turn on Pierre Anton and kill him.
They leave his body inside the old sawmill, and set light to it. After the fire has died down, they return to the scene and each takes away a small container of the ashes of the building, as s souvenir. Agnes tells us that years later, whenever she looked at the souvenir, she was reminded that Meaning is not a thing to be played around with.
