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 )

The entirety of War Horse. Couldn't read it in front of DP as I knew he'd question the tears. Luckily my cat cane abs kept me company as I read.

Heathcliff calling out to Cathy's ghost in Wuthering Heights, it is one of the few times we catch a glimpse of his humanity.

The end of Charlotte Bronte's Villette, where it's obvious what happens, but her narrator refuses to tell us outright: 'Trouble no calm, quiet mind -- let sunny imaginations hope...'

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, where Cromwell's wife and then his daughters die of the 'sweating sickness', and the way in which the grief recurs over the years, especially when another child wears his daughter's peacock-feather angel wings in a Christmas play years later.

The end of AL Kennedy's So I Am Glad, where the accidentally time-travelling Cyrano de Bergerac 'dies'.

The end of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, where Holly Sykes figures out a way of getting her granddaughter and adopted grandson (who is diabetic and fast running out of insulin) out of an post-apocalyptic Ireland in chaos but must stay behind herself, knowing she will never see them again and is facing starvation.

If we're including children's/YA, the scene where Hester and Lee Scoresby die in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

(I see I'm alone in finding Little Father Time's murder-suicide of his siblings in the wardrobe so over the top, even by Hardy's standards, that it's slightly comic...)

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, where Cromwell's wife and then his daughters die of the 'sweating sickness'

Came on to say exactly this. The idea of losing almost your entire family in just a few hours is absolutely terrifying.

Oh, thebakerwithboobs, I don't know how I forgot Black Beauty.

Same with Anne Frank. It just ends, and you know why, Anne herself would have no idea on writing it. It's so chiling and tragic.

The other I've recalled, but can't quote, is the end of Kes. He's so defeated

I agree goodnight Mr Tom when will is found in the cupboard. Also when he realises his friend is dead.

When nighteyes dies in robin Hobbs farseer trilogy. I was inconsolable at that one.

Yes to Matthew dying in Anne of Green Gables. I think that was the first time I ever cried at a book. I was bereft.

Yes to most of Angela’s Ashes.

Gone with the Wind - the last 100 pages or so - when the marriage starts going spectacularly wrong, Bonnie dies, Melanie dies, Mammy leaves and then Rhett. So much misery in 100 pages. I weep every time I re- read though - even though I know what is coming.

"She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died." Charlotte's Web

The penultimate chapter of Private Peaceful when Charlie and Tommo say their final goodbyes. I teach the novel to Y7 and haven’t yet manage to read that chapter aloud without wobbling and I’m usually hard as nails, me.

Tom Robinson being shot in "To Kill A Mockingbird" . Dills account of how Toms widow reacted to the news "she just fell down in the dirt....just ump..like you'd step on an ant"

I still feel unbearably sad that Harry Potter lives under the stairs for 11 years!

A man called Ove - all of it was so poignant.

Wonder - at the end of year when the headmaster talks about Auggie.

A lot of these have brought back the memory of reading them and made me cry all over again (I'm on nasty anti biotic at the moment & feel horrible anyway)
Mine is when Aslan is shaved,ridiculed and killed in The Lion the Witch & the Wardrobe. His dignity & resignation just broke me

@TalkToMeAboutSocialWorkPlease sounds like a Smith's song

The last paragraph of Black Beauty, when he sees his old friend Merrylegs under the trees in the pasture. But you know this cannot be true.... 😭 (actually most of Black Beauty)

Goodness so many of these I have read with no recollection of the poignant bits

Charlottes Web I know almost off by heart but missed that bit.

The one I that has stayed with me and that I do remember was Tess of the d'Urbervilles when Tess discovers that her confession letter did not reach Angel, that he didn't know and forgive her 'disgrace', didn't in fact know anything about it

It really really wasn't even her fault but she was condemned by the world for being assaulted by the son of the house in which she worked.

Just.Not.Fair

Oh thank you all for these, they're wonderful!

It's sad when they find Will and Trudy under the stairs but it never made me cry. It felt more bleak than tear jerking, and it's such a relief that Will is being rescued. But when Will is in the cart going to the station and trying so hard not to cry, and he can hardly speak to say goodbye to Mr Tom, I just feel his pain so keenly. Gosh, I agree about Zach dying though

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, where Cromwell's wife and then his daughters die of the 'sweating sickness', and the way in which the grief recurs over the years, especially when another child wears his daughter's peacock-feather angel wings in a Christmas play years later.

I was going to say this too. The whole book is beautifully written

I want to reread OMAM again, this time without it being slowly, agonisingly raked to death by a yr 10 GCSE syllabus.

Reread again? You know what I mean.

Pressed post too soon.

The whole book is beautifully written but those threads of his wife and daughters running through it are so sad. And he never remarried which was fairly unusual for the time.

I love Mark Rylance's portrayal of him in the TV adaptation, I can't read the books now without hearing it in his voice.

For me, it was the chapter introducing Miriam in ‘Oscar and Lucinda’, and realizing that there was to be no happily ever after, even if I wasn’t entirely expecting it. I remember reading, and just thinking ‘no no no NO!’

@SiddaleeWalker

Thanks! Yes, tragic.

Re Atonement, I had to read and reread that bit a couple of times - THEn I got it and cried!

Re Of Mice and Men, there are only so many times you can open a school text and read 'George shoots Lennie' 🙄 without becoming completely desensitised, unfortunately. Although in the past couple of years one of my pupils did actually manage to be shocked by the (unknown to her) ending: she cried, and that in itself I found very moving.

I also find Candy's begging for the men to leave his old dog alone unbearably sad.

Yes to Wolf Hall and Of Mice and Men. I used to have to stand at the back of the class to read the last page of Of Mice and Men to teenagers in case I cried again.

Another one that gets me is a Jilly Cooper one - in Pandora, when Visitor has died and they have 'Do not weep, little dog, for at the Resurrection thou too shall have a golden tail' on his grave. The first time I read it we had just lost DDog1 and I was totally shattered.

My TA had to leave the room for the end of Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. And I always cry at the end of Skellig.

Beth dying in Little Women...

At around 8 or 9 it was my first experience of crying at the contents of a book, not even a very good book really, but it resonated in my young heart and sent me sobbing to my mum.

Still raises a tear to think of it.

Agree with ending of Boy in the Striped pyjamas.. And when his dad pieces together what happened to him.

In Lion when Suru is reunited with his mum and asked about his brother. Only to find out his brother died the same night he went missing.

The end of the Lovely Bones.. Especially when the couple find the charm from her bracelet.
'' This little girl's grown up by now," she said.

Almost. Not quite.

I wish you all a long and happy life''