Il resto di niente (The remains of nothing)	1	2	3	4	5

Parallel to the value of memory, another important thematic route for the development of the novel is that nihilistic existentialism which, for remote reasons, becomes - for the protagonist and her mates- vital spirit, historical edification through the mysterious ethical resonances of civil action and the awareness of commitment underlying all made and not made choices.
Is maybe this the force pulling on intelligent young people, noble, middle class, with so many possibilities to construct a quiet and satisfactory life, to give up each privilege and try utopia? There must be something else for Eleonora:

Some young people are like God, generous and silly. They build up in their minds the proud images of a world, they fall in love with it and want to make it real: is this a way to satisfy an endless love desire?

If we consider the whole literary work of Striano as an unique text, as a sediment of various thematic levels in different moments, we find and immediate link with that intense page in Indecenze di Sorcier , where the author analyzes the logic of terrorism, a page which evocates an analogous complex of violence, altruistic and egoistic impulses, between the glimmer of a confuse desire of dissolution to mark one's own time.
The knowledge system constructed by Striano is always searching - through the doubt – the lucid, indecent of the most dangerous illusions.
In Il resto di niente the persistent myths are intercepted and returned free from any illusion: power, political faith, religion, love, sex, friendship.
If Eleonora and the others perceive to have acted always according to an uncertain truth, it is sure and certain that humanistic spirit (coming from Voltaire) through which they have reached the belief of the sacral necessity to cultivate the garden of values, of future hypotheses, even if this requires self sacrifice:
So Eleonora thinks:

One day, thanks to our work, flowers and fruits will blossom and children will feed with them. Is nobody takes care of the garden, the world would come to end .