The only time I really wept while reading a story was in middle school. I was reading The Vicomte de Bragelonne and couldn’t believe Porthos was dying right before my eyes.
I remember another story I loved but had to often stop reading it because I was too indignant to assimilate the unjust things happening in there. I was still very young, in high school. I’ve read many books since, although probably not as many as I should have simply because I found some of them impossible to finish, such as Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.
Here’s a passage that I find emotional:
So many memories of the past arise when one tries to recall the features of a beloved being that one perceives them but dimly through these memories, as though through tears. These are the tears of the imagination. When I attempt to recall my mother as she was then I can only recall her brown eyes, always expressing the same goodness and love, the mole on her neck a little below the place where the fine hair curled, a small white eyelet collar and a gentle dry hand which so often caressed me and which I so often kissed; but her general expression escapes me.
I cry at the drop of a hat, I am tearing up just reading these excerpts (and I’ve only read a couple of the books mentioned.)
My go-to sad passage is from (I think) The Hangman’s Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb set in Appalachia a few years ago. It’s a sort of police procedural/mystery with an unnerving, though subtle, dread-filled undertone. But the part that got me was the description of a trailer fire, how it just roared up and incinerated that trailer within minutes. A young mother was caught up in it but managed to save her child. And in the hospital, she asked to see her child one more time but wanted the sheets pulled up to her neck so he wouldn’t see her terribly burned body. ‘Is my face all right?’ And she talked to the woman who was going to take her son in and…omg, I can’t hardly type any more of this. I remember reading it on a hot summer night, and I put the book down and sat there sobbing for ten minutes straight, it was so so devastatingly tragic.
When “Deathly Hallows” was released, I got the book on CD, ripped it to MP3, and loaded it on a player for my nine-year-old daughter. Then we went to clean the church. The poor kid was going from classroom to classroom, cleaning the chalkboards, when she got hit with the death of Hedwig. She was lying on the floor, heaving-ugly-sobbing when I found her.
We had to call my wife, at home, and have her get out a permanent pen, and write the following sentences on the correct page in the hard copy.
“But the bright flash was Fawkes, the phoenix, appearing out of nowhere. He grasped Hedwig firmly but gently, and in the same split second, they apparated away. Hedwig and Fawkes went to live in an owl-nut tree deep in the forest, waiting patiently for the day when it would be safe to return.”
The kid has had a soft spot in her heart for owls ever since she spotted one perched on the side of an HVAC vent downtown at the age of two. It was about the size of a softball, grey and fuzzy, and only about four feet off the ground. For a toddler, finding the thing that a hundred people have walked past just reaffirms that they live in a different world than all the grownups. Hedwig was then her favorite character in the entire series. Writing “the real version” in the hard copy was the only way to have the world make sense. And I have to think that Rowling would heartily approve.
Now for me, it’s the death of Piggy in “Lord of the Flies”.
I’ve done some odd things before. Our library used to have an “Edible Books” contest. I made a sheet cake and iced a maze on it. At the opening of the maze I used fondant to make a mouse. At the end of the maze I used fondant to form a headstone, with an A naturally, and some tiny flowers. Won one of the prizes for that cake.
It’s even sadder if you read the book and know how young Ellen O’Hara was, younger than portrayed in the movie. She was sixteen when she bore Scarlett, so that makes her about thirty-six when she died.
I know! And add another layer of tragedy that Ellen has a secret that only she and Mammy (and the reader) know, that Ellen’s heart truly belonged to Phillipe, and it was he, and not Gerald, that Ellen called for in her dying delirium of typhoid. She died with his name on her lips with Mammy at her side. ::sniff, sniff::
Death picks up an older lady who helped him throughout the book. She says, “Oh, it’s you. You gave me quite a start.” He takes her out, gets her flowers, dances, and they have a great night. In the end, she realizes she is dead and has been dead for a little bit.
It makes you cry, then laugh. She says, “Oh…when did I die?”
Death says, “Do you remember when you said I gave you quite a start? Turns out I gave you quite a stop.”
Gerald knew about Phillipe. That’s one of the reasons he figured she’d be open to marrying him, a much older man of forty-one. She hated that her family had driven Phillipe away and she was willing to marry Gerald to get away from them. But Gerald really did love her.
I didn’t remember that Gerald knew about Phillipe. We need to start a GWTW (the novel) thread. So much heartbreak. I do remember that Gerald just blithely goes off to the 12 Oaks bbq and leaves Ellen at home to deal with the dirty business of firing Jonas Wilkerson by herself. Gerald loves her, but in that up-on-a-pedestal way that men of that era did. Ellen is the perfect Head Mistress, all calm and cool on the exterior while pedaling like mad underneath the surface, suppressing her feelings, burying her broken heart. I don’t think anyone but Mammy ever truly knew her.
Thinking about how Scarlett’s life would have been so different with a little access to birth control, poor thing, is an entire discussion on it’s own, because I also cried when she lost the baby and she and Rhett were asking for each other and nobody connected the dots. Her answer was to banish him from the inner sanctum of her bedroom and her heart. So many missed signals. She likes sex, she likes men, and she is socialized that those feelings are improper. She likes the sex, she just doesn’t like what the natural result of the sex is, which is children. She is a horrible mother and was never really meant to be one…oh, how I do run on!
That would be a fun idea. The movie was long enough but there was still a ton of stuff and characters left out. Do you remember the little bit about how Ellen’s children were named? She and Gerald had the three daughters, then three sons that all died as infants, and were all named Gerald O"Hara, Jr.
Gerald marrying Ellen was in the third chapter. Gerald is telling his brothers about how he has his eye on her and they tell him he doesn’t have a chance in Hell of winning her, and besides, she’s in love with her cousin Phillipe Robillard. Then Gerald says he knows he’s been gone to Lousiana for a month. His brothers are as surprised as the rest of society when the engagement is announced.
Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. And yes, I don;t recall the book all that well (though I really enjoy McCrumb’s work) but that scene I recall in excruciating detail, andI responded to it in the same way you did. There’s something about the little boy just saying “Okay,” his attention wandering, when being told he will be living with someone else, because he can’t possibly understand what’s going on… and the doctor telling the victim “I don’t know if it would work, but we could try,” with the clear certainty that “it” won;t work and that she’s better off dying now…
Geez. Absolutely heart-wrenching.
Other votes for the end of Of Mice and Men, and the end of Piggy (but also the end of Simon, and the end of Lord of the Flies in general: “He wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy…”)
when she lost the baby and she and Rhett were asking for each other and nobody connected the dots. Her answer was to banish him from the inner sanctum of her bedroom and her heart. So many missed signals. She likes sex, she likes men, and she is socialized that those feelings are improper. She likes the sex, she just doesn’t like what the natural result of the sex is, which is children. She is a horrible mother and was never really meant to be one…oh, how I do run on! 