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/lit/ - Literature

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1466789 No.1466789 [Reply] [Original]

Saddest scenes in literature. Please use spoilers.

Pic related. Karenin's death

>> No.1466793

>>1466789
In the middle of reading this. That spoiler tag is so tempting.

>> No.1466794

>>1466793
Don't do it, man. Don't fucking do it.

>> No.1466798

>>1466793
Do it, book fucking sucks.

>> No.1466802

>>1466798
You suck. Butthead.

>> No.1466805

A Prayer for Owen Meaney: the ending, the scene where it is revealed what all the basketball practice was for. Total emotional devastation.

>> No.1466819

He doesn't like Green Eggs and Ham.

>> No.1466823

>>1466819
FUCK YOU.

>> No.1466832

>>1466789
that whole book was pretty moving. but i think there were more sad moments than this particular one.

>>1466805
yeah that was rough. especially because you always thought that basketball practice was just the two kids dicking around.

In "A Fine Balance" there was tons of painful moments. but right at the end I was brought to tears, hard.

>> No.1466854

>>1466798
Yep.

>> No.1466908

All of East of Eden. That book wrecked me for a month.

>> No.1466939

Farewell to Arms when Catherine and the baby die. Even Hemingway shed a manly tear or two for that one, and he wrote the damn thing.

>> No.1467022

Maybe not the saddest scene ever, but the scene in one of Bukowski's books where he sleeps on a park bench after a bender. In the morning he wakes up and sees three kids, two guys and one girl, on another bench in the park. They wake up and say, "So, how much money do we have?" They dig through their pockets and come up with barely enough for a bus fare. They look downcast for a minute, shrug their shoulders, and say, "Ok, I guess we should move."

I'm not sure why it was so upsetting to me. The idea of being so desolate, so out of sorts, that all you have is a few dimes to rub together is just awful. These kids were young, maybe teenagers. They shouldn't have to live that way.

Just as depressing was the idea of Chinaski asleep on the bench on his own. He has about as much money, has been living on nothing but candy bars (because they're cheap) for a few weeks, and when he wakes up on that bench he doesn't even have friends to share that misery with. He really is on his own - no one is going to dig into their pockets to help him out.

>> No.1467033

Pietro Crespi in 100 Years of Solitude made me really sad.

He just vanished into thin air, like a sand sculpture buffeted out of existence by the wind. He loved and wanted to be loved back. His presence there in Macondo happened because he was in love. He gave all of his love. He ached with his love. For years his heart withered, then rotted, then in a puff of depression he was gone.

>> No.1467046

For me it was easily in Anna Karenina when Vronsky is on the train platform headed to the front. He's utterly defeated. His every action, his every word, his every breath is suffused with heartache. He has given up. He wants only to be away. He doesn't even want to die. He can't see that death will be any better than his hell of a life.

He had been such a great man. Vronsky was full of life. People loved him. He loved people. Then we see him with his soul snuffed out. It's hard to see a broken man without breaking, in some small way, yourself.

>> No.1467056

I teared up a bit while reading Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. In one poem, his daughter comes to talk to him and ask where mommy is. He can't even begin to think of what to say.

>> No.1467195

The final scene of Where the Red Fern Grows made me cry for three days straight. My mom brought me chicken soup and tissue boxes. My dad was disappointed that he sired a little sissy boy. I was 8 years old.

>> No.1467210

>>1467195
don't talk about that book don't talk about that book you will make me relive the most horrible moment of my childhood

>> No.1467212

I always sniffle at the end of Anne of Green Gables, but the real killer is the end of The Left Hand of Darkness. Not only do I cry, but it leaves me with this cold empty feeling in my chest for a while after.

>> No.1467220

>>1467210
You mean when he's hunting the ghost coon and that awful kid trips on the fucking axe and dies? Freaked me the hell out too!

>> No.1467230

>>1467220
The dogs, broheem. Those damn loyal dogs.

>> No.1467239

>>1467195
I learned more about death and mourning from that book then I did from all the goldfish and hamsters my parents bought to try and teach those same concepts.

>> No.1467853

tear-jerker bump

>> No.1467863

not really a spoiler, but - all of one hundred years of solitude

>> No.1468858
File: 79 KB, 416x599, DeathlyHallowsCover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1468858

The last book of Harry Potter. Fucking started reading that in my childhood, grew attached to the characters, then they fucking kill the owl, Fred dies, Dumbledore dies, Mad-eye Moddy dies, Sirius dies, you realize how alone Harry is in the seventh book, Hogwarts is pretty much demolished, and the ending doesn't even constitute bittersweet.

Kid book my ass. Shit's fucked up.

>> No.1468900

The final chapter of Cancer Ward, Sofya Osipovna and David's death in Life & Fate, the horses in Germinal, Jude-the-fucking-Obscure, pretty much every Mansfield or Salinger short story - I found Gunnar's Death in Njal's Saga pretty heartbreaking too. Oh, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

>> No.1468907

The problem with spoilers is that you still gonna look at them.

>> No.1468924

>>1468907
if you're a child (or if the poster doesn't mention what (s)he is talking about)

>> No.1468927

>>1468907

Umm, no?

>> No.1468926

Wuthering heights was pretty sad, but probably because i got friend zoned at the time

>> No.1468931

I hated it when in David Copperfield [/spoiler] his first wife dies [/spoiler]

>> No.1468958

Bastard out of Carolina. That entire book is fucking depressing, but Bone's mother choosing her rapist husband over her own daughter is probably the worst. That and her friend lighting her self on fire.[/spoiler} Infant Immortality fucking averted as fuck.

>> No.1468995

>>1468931

I'd say I'm glad that I read it, but I would be lying. Dickens is a bit shite.

>> No.1469010

I am not ashamed the say that the entire final two chapters of The Road made me cry like a little bitch.

>> No.1469045

When Humbert Humbert goes to see Lolita, now pregnant, after a few years, and realises that he ruined her life. Lots of tears ensues.

>> No.1469664

The scene in one of Hemingway's short stories (can't remember the title) where some woman falls in love with a man, then he gets drunk with his buddies and rapes her in a barn. He finishes, zips up his pants, and leaves her sobbing on a bale of hay. I was stunned.

>> No.1469682

>>1469010

Amen. Although I think the saddest part, or perhaps the most profound part, of the The Road comes when he has to teach the young boy how to kill himself, and he can't even kill the boy when he needs to. feelsbadman

>> No.1469698

>>1469045
Ahh, that one got to me too. That was the first book that made me feel numb after finishing.

>> No.1469730

>>1469045

Yeah, that part puts me in tears.

Also, forty thousand brothers/ could not, with all their quantity of love/, make up my sum.

When I read The Age of Innocence for the first time I cried immensely at the end too.

>> No.1469823

I thought The Jungle was pretty rough... didn't cry or anything, but definitley made me yearn to read more and more because I knewwww there had to be a silver lining for Jurgis somewhere...

But no, it is a tragedy in its complete sense of the word

>> No.1470062

No Longer Human when he and the woman (the name escapes, I'm a bit drunk) try to commit suicide but he fucks up and only the woman dies.

>> No.1470907

I know it's not considered to be on the Grand-Scale of literature, but the scene in The Kite Runner where the protagonist walks in to the bathroom to see that the young kid has slit his wrists.

>> No.1470911

>>1470907

Sorry, dawgs... I don't know how to Spoiler Image something. Any help?

>> No.1470914

Ethan Frome, the ending with the sled

>> No.1470926

A Hanful of Dust, when [you realise Tony was drugged and missed the explorer's who could've rescued him from a life of re-reading Dicken's novels to that freak in the jungle)

>> No.1470928

>>1470926
sorry, that wasn't spoilered. I think I did it wrong... a how to?

>> No.1470931

>>1470928
http://www.4chan.org/faq#spoiler

read the faq bro

>> No.1470933

>>1470914

Completely agree. This book - along with Ballad of the Sad Cafe, another depressing one - was on my school's 3rd year English reading list. And they wonder why kids now are scared of reading 'serious' literature in place of Twilight.

>> No.1470936

>>1466789
McCarthy's "The Crossing" when let me see if this works first.

>> No.1470939

>>1470936
The wolf gets attacked in the pit and the kid has to come and shoot her. But the entire Border trilogy is insanely depressing anyway.

>> No.1470950

A book called Iron Will - A kid and his dog have to win a sled race or their family will lose their land. The ending was heartbreakingly bittersweet.

>> No.1470952 [SPOILER] 
File: 384 KB, 1280x1920, 1295410304416.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1470952

When Jane stopped speaking to Ender. You know what I'm talking about. It shined a giant mag-light on my shitty life. No one fucking loves me... BAWW!

>> No.1470965

>>1470931
oh. right. Kind of a retard right here

>> No.1471003

The Road by Cormac McCarthy [/spoiler]ALL OF IT[/spoiler]

it's just all overall depressing shit. and the movie was absolute trash too.

>> No.1471033

The scene in Everything is Illuminated when Alex's grandfather talks about the Nazi's lining people up in front of a firing squad and questioning if they're Jews. The grandfather has a chance to save his best friend by vouching for him, but chooses to remain silent instead so that he could avoid suspicion continue his lineage. He explains this to his grandson and talks about how he's sorry everyday but still considers his decision necessary. Then he kills himself a few days later as Alex details in his last letter.

I wanted to cry buckets. Also props to whoever said Jude the Obscure. HIS FUCKING KIDS HANG THEMSELVES? WTFAMIREADING

>> No.1471050

>>1470952
Ugh, that was really sad.

This thread...why, OP, why???

>> No.1471087

The very first time I remember crying from a book was when I was in 2nd grade and read the Chronicles of Prydain.

When Gurgi burns his harp to keep them warm and when Alexander describes the sound the doors to the Dwarven kingdoms made when they closed forever. Both had me tearing up.

>> No.1471149

<spoiler> is this how you make spoiler text? </spoiler>