Not Nothing

In Not Nothing, hunger is a key motif that emphasizes Alex’s emotional and physical struggles and initially connects him to Josey, illustrating The Impact of Storytelling and Intergenerational Bonds. Alex’s daily life is defined by a constant struggle for food. He describes eating the same chicken every night and a bologna sandwich every day, and while living with his mother, he ate even less. It was hunger that led Alex to tell his principal about his situation, in the hope of receiving help. His hunger also becomes a reflection of his emotional emptiness after losing his mother, as he is not only deprived of food, but also of a sense of stability and belonging. When Alex goes to Maya-Jade’s house, he has to reconcile the fact that she has so much while he has so little.

Josey, who grew up in privilege but then lived through the Holocaust, recognizes Alex’s hunger and connects with him on a deeper level. His understanding of food deprivation stems from his own experiences in ghettos and concentration camps during the Holocaust. When Josey sees Alex trying to eat a half-eaten lasagna rejected by a resident, he recognizes both Alex’s physical and emotional hunger, which in turn leads him to extend his friendship to the boy. In this way, hunger functions as a motif of both physical and emotional need for both Alex and Josey.

Sewing is another key motif in the text, reflecting both Josey’s development of literal sewing skills and speaking to the way small acts of human connection can add up to something big. 

For Josey, sewing is not just a skill or a job but a life-saving tool. Even though he can no longer see, Josey knows that one sews with the hands, which allows him to continue sewing even without seeing the needle and thread. Josey learned to sew thanks to Olka, which immediately establishes the link between sewing and human connection in the novel: “There were so many things I might have done in that moment… But for some reason I did something else, something that would save my life, over and over. I asked Olka to teach me to sew” (85). 

Learning to sew would not only bring Josey closer to the love of his life, but would actually save his life as well. When faced with the atrocities of surviving in the camp, Adek and Olka reminded Josey of the power of sewing, giving him a sense of control and agency amid chaos. When Josey sewed secret pockets into his mother’s clothes to hide her jewelry during the Nazi regime, he reflects, “With the threaded needle in my hand, I felt a little calmer, in control of something, even if only the tautness of a seam” (139, emphasis added). In the camp, Josey sews together a Nazi uniform, with Adek and Olka’s help, and successfully escapes the camp. 

Sewing also symbolizes the importance of small acts of human connection more generally, as captured in the passage, “Maybe it’s a small thing, sewing a hem, helping someone with a crossword puzzle. But stitch one small thing to another small thing and another, and eventually you have a tapestry as big as the world” (172). In Josey’s own life, small acts of resistance and care, like Adek and Olka bringing him the supplies he needs to escape, save his life. What Josey teaches Alex in turn is that every choice and action a human performs can join with other actions to create, figuratively speaking, “a tapestry as big as the world”—i.e., changing the world for the better, one act at a time.