255 replies to this topic

[Lord of the Night]

Title is self-explanatory really. Out of every book you've ever read, what part was the saddest for you. Did it actually make you cry or just have watery eyes? Why was it sad?


For me its the end to the novel The Killing Ground by Graham McNeill when Ultramarines Captain Uriel Ventris is forced to mercy kill the Lord of the Unfleshed. The Unfleshed are mutants that were created by the Iron Warriors and abandoned to die, and in The Killing Ground after escaping the Iron Warriors's homeworld with Ventris and Pasanius Lysane they are possessed by vengeful spirits and forced to do their bidding. Ventris tries to help them despite the Imperium's policy on mutants being kill on sight, but is forced to admit near the end that they have to be put down before they can kill anymore innocents. With a kill-team at his side Ventris kills the three remaining Unfleshed and confronts the Lord who is freed after the ghosts are banished, but he is still vulnerable to other psychic phenomina and must be put down.

What makes the scene so sad is that The Lord of the Unfleshed is perfectly aware of what he has done and is horrified, collapsing to his knees and crying before a glass fresco of the Emperor whom he and the other Unfleshed still worshipped as the God-Emperor, even though the Imperial Church would say the Emperor despises their ilk. Ventris offers him some comfort and before he can make the shot the sun rises and the light from the fresco shines on the Lord of the Unfleshed and reflects his true face before he was mutated, a young boy. The Lord cries out that the Emperor really does love him, to which Ventris quietly agrees before shooting him in the back and killing him with a meltagun.

Closest I ever came to crying when reading a book. There have been other moments that made me sad but that was the one that made me the saddest.


LotN

[russjass]

Spoilers for WoT

Spoiler

When Rand strangles Min under Semirhages control. Didnt really care about Min, but thought about how it would destroy Rand

The Red Wedding

[Mr. E]

You know, this might be a weird example, but there's a part in The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao where Oscar tries to start a Sci-Fi/Fantasy book club at the school he's teaching at. He fans out all these beautiful editions on the table and sits and waits and nobody comes. For four straight weeks he does this, before giving up on it. Maybe it's the way Oscar was characterized the whole novel, but that really got me for some reason.

[RedEyedGhost]

Fool's Errand by Hobb

Spoiler

When Nighteyes died.

[UndergroundMan]

For me, it was a small part in The Persian Boy by Mary Renault. After the protagonist, a young eunuch and former sex slave, travels through some town in the Middle East, he sees a large group of women waiting outside of a temple. Apparently, all the women must go to the temple everyday until a man pays to sleep with them in the temple. The money goes to the priests and  their job is done and they are released from the service as a temple prostitute. Most of the girls are young, however, the protagonist sees one woman who is a few years older than the rest and quite hideous. He has compassion on the girl, because he can tell that she has waited in front of the temple for many years without one man wanting her. So he gives her some money so she no longer has to wait everyday before the temple, but releases her from her requirement to sleep with him. To the protagonist's surprise, she is angry at his generous offer, throwing the money in the dirt and weeping. She just wanted to be desired. The protagonist almost granted her wish, then unwittingly devastated the poor girl.
It's only less than a page in the book, but it struck me as incredibly pitiful and sad for some reason. Maybe because it made think of all the unwanted and tragic lives that people have lived throughout history; lives that we will never know, for the history books focus on those that are powerful and important, like Alexander the Great. In many ways, I think that was the purpose of Renault's book, having the eunuch be the POV for Alexander's conquests.

[Feather Crystal]

Within this book series, definitely the Red Wedding. Outside of this series, The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks. Absolute, gut-wrenching sobs when the elderly husband and wife die holding hands. OMG!!! Total sap, but emotional just the same.

[Mikael]

Well, I tear up every now and then, last time was probably during Never Let Me Go. A little surprised at the Red Wedding mentions, to me it was more annoying than sad, but to each their own.

[Contrarius]

Where the Red Fern Grows, when the dogs die. That scarred me for life.

[Sci-2]

Without spoilers -> Bluest Eye, Native Son, Gatsby.

[Tears of Lys]

There were a few parts of "We were the Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates that kind of ripped my heart out.  A made-for-TV movie was on Lifetime, which totally gutted it, IMO.  Didn't capture the heartbreak of it.   Anyway, after I read it, I was depressed for weeks.  Although, maybe that had something to do with the fact that I was recovering from a serious operation at the time.


The Red Wedding inspired a lot more anger in me than sadness.  I'm pretty sure that was one of the many times I threw one or more of the books against the wall .   The part about what the f***ng Freys did to Grey Wolf and Rob particularly got to me.

You guys will laugh (maybe) when I say that when I read about Dumbledore in... which one was it now?  Order of the Phoenix?  Can't recall now.  But maybe you'll know what I mean when I say I cried my friggin' eyes out.  Now I can laugh about it, but at the time it was pretty desperate around here.

Oh, and Lord of the Rings when Frodo's saying goodbye to Sam -

[sologdin]

maybe this:

Quote

Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question'd me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field
Of hair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels' history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven
It was my hint to speak,--such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:

[Prince of the North]

Oh, there are so many.  But this is top-of-mind for me right now.  I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter but I've read them and seen the movies, of course.  I just started reading Chamber of Secrets to my daughter and happened to catch parts of Deathly Hallows on HBO recently as well.  So, yeah, for something sad I guess just...everything...about Severus Snape.

[Lothar Imbel]

"Reek, Reek it ryhmes with weak... you have to know your name!"

From the First Law:

Spoiler

Lord Marshal West's death.  Apart from being an angry bastard, West was the moral centre in an otherwise amoral series, and him dying from Bayaz's nuke-thing pissed me off to no end.

Also Lenny from Of Mice and Men

[Nearly Headless Ned]

The Whole of Never Let Me Go.
Lady Macbeths mental disintergration.
Winters Bone- When Gail leaves Ree and when Uncle Teardrop figures out who the killer is.
Jeliza Rose's entire predicament in Mitch Cullens Tideland.

[Tears of Lys]

Lothar Imbel, on 14 May 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

"Reek, Reek it ryhmes with weak... you have to know your name!"

From the First Law:

Spoiler

Lord Marshal West's death.  Apart from being an angry bastard, West was the moral centre in an otherwise amoral series, and him dying from Bayaz's nuke-thing pissed me off to no end.

Also Lenny from Of Mice and Men

Definitely qualifies.  Plus just about every chapter of Grapes of Wrath.

[Memory Lane]

Harry Potter 7:

Spoiler

The scene at his parents' graves in Godric Hollow, where Harry hits absolute rock-bottom, wishes he was dead, and start weeping. The way it's written gets me every time.

The Long Walk:

The ending, man . .

Spoiler

the main character's mind is completely broken at the end, to where he can no longer understand that he's won the race. That final line - "he found the strength to run" - made me tear up when I read it.

Stephen King's IT ending:

Spoiler

The whole sequence of the characters going their separate ways was incredibly sad after the victory over It. It's perhaps supposed to be a comfort that they'll end up forgetting Derry and its horrors, but it comes at the price of their bond of friendship - and this time, it's for good. Mike Hanlon's final words in the book are deeply emotional.

Arya at the Red Wedding in ASoS:

Personally, I found Arya's POV chapter at the Red Wedding to be far more sad than Catelyn's, which made me furious. She was close, so close to finally getting "home" after her arduous, often horrific journey across the land - and now she'll never go home, not truly. The scene where she's looking at the entrance to the Twins, begging to get there while the Hound restrains her amidst the chaos of the Frey betrayal, was heart-breaking.

[servethe_Realm]

When Dumbledore died in Harry Potter 6 I definitely cried.
Theres a book called Do they Hear you When you Cry about a real life girl who escapes female genital cutting by coming to America only to be detained in prison for years. That book was truly sad.
White Oleander is an amazing book that got me very emotional
Finally, the Red Tent when Dinah finds her lover dead....

The Red Wedding for me left me slack-jawed and when they did what they did with Robb and Grey Wind I for sure shed a few tears, it was so unexpected for me.

[Istvan Divega]

The death of King Théodenon the fields of Pelennor

Faithful servant yet master's bane,

Lightfoot's foal, swift Snowmane.

[Sci-2]

I'd forgotten the ending for It. Man I need to reread that bad boy.

[Thallus]

Wizard and Glass.

The first read is emotional.

The second read after the finale and epilogue of The Dark Tower just changes that book into something beyond a tragedy.  The whole time you're just wishing that this run will be different, that Roland had learned something and that things would be different. Alas,