What do you think are the saddest scenes/passages in literature? *General spoiler alert*

[QuimReaper]

For me, it's either:

• Lyra leafing Pantalaimon on the shore in The Amber Spyglass
• Will leaving to go back to his awful mother in Goodnight Mr Tom

Makes me tear up just thinking about either. What's yours?

Quotes would be much appreciated, even though I was too lazy to look any up!

(This thread will probably contain assorted spoilers, don't read on if you're going to complain about them )

Jude's son Time killing himself and his brother(s?) in Jude the Obscure. Can't find a quote.

Bruno and Shmuel holding hands as they die in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Makes me cry every time:

'Despite the chaos that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.'

@TheBitchOfTheVicar “Done Because We Are Too Menny”. So awful

The “reveal” of Robbie and Cecilia’s fates in Atonement
George shooting Lennie while describing the farm in Of Mice And Men

I once read a quote on a similar thread but don't know what it's from. If anyone can tell me, I'd love to know.

It's about a boy at a school disco I think, and it's about how lonely he is, "and he sat there all night and spoke to no-one, and no-one spoke to him."

Oh, and Mrs Weasley being unable to get rid of the boggart in the attic because it kept turning into her worst fear - the bodies of her family.

Beth’s death in Good Wives. When I fist read it I thought it was typical nineteenth century sentimentality. But after my sister died following a long illness I understood that it was truthful, if sanitised.

@SiddaleeWalker That quote has always stayed with me. So dark.

I do love this type of thread as i'm terrible at them, as I've a memory for details like a sieve unless I get prompts.

Anyway the Goodnight Mister Tom part I found saddest was when Will was found with his baby sister Trudy. His leaving was sad, but the bit where he's found made me upset.

I'm now frustrated I can't recall book details of ones I read as an adult properly!! Though as a child I sobbed for an age at the ending of Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose, quite inconsolable I was!

Candy’s dog being shot in Of Mice and Men and him sobbing silently.

Not the saddest, I’m struggling to remember all of them, but I cried when Ove died in A Man Called I read it more recently, a couple of years after first reading it and I cried again.
Helen’s death at Lockwood in Jane Eyre is terribly sad.

“A Man Called Ove”

Sorry he is not sobbing silently but no one is comforting him. I find that scene so tense and heart wrenching. Candy’s feeble defence of the dog, waiting to hear the shot, Slim letting Carlson (?) take the dog, Candy’s realisation he has nothing.

Matthews death in Anne of Green Gables.

Yes, the kids being killed in Jude "because we were too many" is just so sad. I quite liked the melancholic bits of Hardy until I read that part!

@BelulahBlanca that bit was too shocking to even make me cry- I just remember feeling hollow when I read it.

Candy and his dog! Of course. I was obsessed with Steinbeck and OMAM as a teenager. My brother used to torment me by asking if I wanted to tend the rabbits and if I wanted ketchup on my beans, and mock my inevitable wobbly lipped reaction. Git .

Thebitchofavicar has it. That part of "Jude the Obscure" is almost unbearable.

The whole of "Never Let Me Go" is pretty bleak

Also when the animals realise were Boxer is really going in Animal Farm. Even thinking about it I get a rising sense of panic.

I was coming on to say Jude the Obscure. Also don't have a quote.

I also proper cried at Angela's Ashes. I just remember crying, not at what though. I may not have even finished the book.

Recently I cried when reading 'we are all completely beside ourselves'. It was at the where the main character saw her 'sister' after her sister was taken away.

When Todd has to leave Manchee behind to be killed in The Knife of Never Letting Go

"Todd! Todd! Todd?"
😭😭😭😭

The Jewish people being marched through the town in 'The Book Thief' broke me.

Much of the second half of The Secret Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (?), but most especially when they reveal his son was dead all along . Cried proper tears when I read that .

The last page of Anne Frank's diary, because you know why there isn't any more. They survived so long in hiding, then it was all ruined in a moment.

Yes, Manchee too

The part in 1984 where Winston describes how his mother and sister disappeared.

The ending of A Tale Of Two Cities (hence the username!); “it is a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done. It is a far far better rest I go to than I have ever known”.

Stuck in traffic on the motorway and still choking up as I type it (not driving btw)

The first time a book made me cry was Black Beauty. I remember it so vividly and it still makes me feel sad now. Ginger the horse had said her life was so awful that she wanted to die. Black Beauty saw a chestnut horse dead on the back of a truck and hoped it was her friend, free from misery. My nine year old heart never fully repaired.