What was the first piece of fiction that you remember reading, having read to you, or watching (in the case of a movie, TV show, or a play) without a happy ending – where good fails to triumph, where the hero fails to prevail, where everyone dies without a purpose, etc?
For me, it was I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. I must have been in fourth or fifth grade. A boy rides his bicycle for most of the book, desperately trying to get a package for his father. At the end it turns out that he has been imagining the whole thing, that he’s been riding around the grounds of a mental institution he’s been kept in ever since he witnessed his parents being killed by the government. The implication is that he will either spend the rest of his life there or be executed himself.
Man, that did a number on me – but it laid the groundwork for a later appreciation of The X-Files and any number of conspiracy thrillers.
I’m thinking 10th great lit. class, and each made enough of an impression that I still remember them by independently and by name (and can give a rough synopses) these 10-12 years later, despite having read them each only once.
There were probably earlier examples, but those are the two I remember.
A Flash of Green by John MacDonald was not the earliest but the earliest that really had a solid effect on me. (Maybe the others did not catch me by surprise).
Hmm, OK, the short storey “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. That one also.
Whoops! I just realized - I forgot The Lorax! I suspect that was the first real downer I experienced. I’ll admit, it’s not a complete downer, the movie does end with a ray of hope, but…
Bambi, at apparently 11 months of age. I still vividly remember parts of it. Quite startling, really. And yes, it’s not a confabulation with a later release, I remember seeing the theater it was in as part of the memory… I don’t think I was quite able to focus on the screen entirely.
