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 )

Henry's letter to Clare at the end of the Time Traveller's Wife...

About this death of mine—I hope it
was simple and clean and unambiguous. I hope it didn’t create too much fuss. I’m
sorry. (This reads like a suicide note. Strange.) But you know: you know that if I
could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second:
whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried
away by goblins.
Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through
the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange
life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more
density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and
surround you, keep you, hold you.

If I want good literary sob, I read the death of Ruby in Anne of Avonlea.

I read the death of Ruby in Anne of Avonlea

The unfinished sewing where her poor dead fingers left the needle

Matthew’s death and the loss of Joy for Anne

Beth’s death in GW.

The end of Tom’s Midnight Garden.

Helen Burns’ grave in Jane Eyre “resurgam”.

A quote from The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford:-

“But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,” I said. “He was the great love of her life, you know.”

“Oh, dulling,” said my mother sadly. “One always thinks that. Every, every time.”

@haverhill I want to read the book now! I do hope you do check it out and it doesn't let you down. If you're safe with anyone, it's Ghibli 

OMG OP this is a rough thread.

Sorry @VivianSmith

@SomethingNastyInTheBallPool I'm so glad you admitted that, I have always felt the same way. I found Tess very affecting as a teenager, and devoured Far from the Madding Crowd, so my English teacher suggested I try Jude and said it'd make me cry, but it felt like he was trying a bit too hard and had almost become a parody of himself.

(And I found Father Time really irritating )

I wish people wouldn’t keep mentioning The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas on these threads, though. It’s manipulative schlock which does a gross disservice to the people actually murdered at Auschwitz.

Seconded.

When Manon dies in Manon Lescaut. I can’t remember it perfectly because it was decades ago I read it but I was sobbing for hours. It is written so sadly.

Yes to when Baruch dies in The Amber Spyglass. And yes to Lee and Hester. Yes to Lyra leaving Pan. Also when Will and Lyra have to leave each other.

A lot of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre!

Came on to say what peachgreen said from 'Life After Life', but also the young daughter says, "mummy I've had enough" before they both die which is the saddest thing of all.
Haven't read the time travellers wife but I saw the film when I was pregnant and cried great murdering sobs throughout the whole bloody thing!

The ending of Atwood’s Hag-Seed when Felix lets his dead daughter go. It’s an amazing book if you’ve studied The Tempest as it somehow manages to be sympathetic to Prospero and to Caliban at the same time, which in most interpretations doesn’t happen.

Cliché I know, but the ending of the Railway Children. I never got the fuss as a child, but as I’ve got older I seem to have become more susceptible.
Most of Goodnight Mister Tom as already mentioned.

The bit in Bali Rai’s Rani and Sukh where it becomes clear that history is repeating itself, it’s a particularly good take on the star-crossed lovers theme.

Charlotte Sometimes when Charlotte finds out from Emily why she could swap with Clare and that she’ll never be able to meet her

The Boy in Striped Pyjamas- thirded (is that a thing?)
I don’t like it, I think it’s poorly written too (the English puns from a German-speaking child really bug me). But whenever I express that opinion IRL I get shouted down and given a lecture on Auschwitz, nobody lets me explain why.

Agreed entirely on the schlocky, manipulative Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, @QuimReaper and @bookworm14. Jewish friends who lost family in the camps loathe it, and it’s a major bone of contention for many Holocaust educators.

This is good on why TBITSP is so awful: outlandishlit.blogspot.com/2016/02/yikes-i-think-i-hated-this-boy-in.html?m=1

I agree with a Pp on Private Peaceful penultimate chapter, absolutely heartbreaking, my DS read it last year, for school, and I thought it looked good so I read it too and actually cried, it's a long time since a book has done that to me! Also most historically accurate fiction can be very emotional because you know someone has actually lived it!

More from Kate Atkinson - this from Case Histories, the first Jackson Brodie novel:

Theo never doubted for a moment that when he died he would be reunited with Laura and, in his mind, it was just like The Railway Children–he would walk out of a fog and Laura would be there and she would say, ‘Daddy, my daddy.’ It wasn’t that Theo believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife, he just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.

Animal Farm, where they look from pig to man and can't tell the difference. Such hopelessness.

The Grapes of Wrath, where Rose of Sharon has lost her baby and the family are destitute and sheltering from the rain in a barn, and she agrees to basically breastfeed a starving man.

youandme you’ve reminded me of the scene in Case Histories where Jackson finds the missing child’s bones and cries, it says something like ‘these were the holiest relics he’d ever touch”

Good thread!

The end of Small Island really gets me, where Queenie asks Hortense to take her baby and raise it as her own. I read the book years ago, but recently saw the stage adaptation and it was heartbreaking. The passage from the book is beautiful.

"There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care. Hold on to them unspoken for as long as you can just so your world will stay intact."

I fucking love Margaret Atwood.

Yes, she is such a brilliant and affecting writer.

Surprised at how many say Harry Potter whole thing left me entirely unmoved.

Me too. Took no part in any of it. The little I read persuaded me not to even go there.

Lots of you have said Piggy’s death, Simon’s death, Boxer’s fate and Beth’s death. Agree with all of those. I remember the death of Tarka the otter and the loss of Kes.

I was very moved too as a child by the transformation of Heidi’s life and loved the sheer cosiness of it afterwards.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry...at the end when Cassie realises the crop they need is gone and how TJ has been set up by the brothers and that his fate is sealed. 'I cried for TJ. For TJ and the land'.

Can't quote as at work... But why has nobody mentioned the bit where Miriam is going to be executed in A Thousand Splendid Suns! She is reminiscing about coming into the world as an unwanted child, a bastard, but leaving as a 'mother' and loved. And the ending where Laila is discussing the name of her soon to be baby.. Makes me cry every time..

Another animal dying one is when the faithful dog, Jack dies in the Little House books. I think it's at the beginning of The Silver Lake.

Another animal dying one is when the faithful dog, Jack dies in the Little House books. I think it's at the beginning of The Silver Lake

YES! And Laura asks Pa if he’ll go to heaven.