Well, we’ve done movies and TV shows, now let’s go for stories and books (the line is thin, so I include both). I request full descriptions; not just the book or story name, but what part made the tear ducts go bananas.
For me: Heinlein does it surprisingly often for a science fiction author. “The Man who Travelled in Elephants” kills me every time when he meets his wife, at the end. The waterworks flow. The Door into Summer, also at the end, where Davis talks about his cat getting fat and dying soon.
Narnia does it to me. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Aslan is walking alone to give himself up to the witch. The Last Battle, just about the entire last quarter of the book, when Aslan comes and tells the last king of Narnia he has done well, then destroys the land and leads his beloved to the high country.
There are others, of course, but I open the discussion here. Have at it!
SPOILERS AHEAD Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I didn’t cry when Cedric Diggory was killed, but later when Harry was recovering in the hospital and he felt incredibly guilty for Cedric’s death. I also leaked a few tears now and then throughout the Harry Potter series whenever there’s a major scene that talks about his parents, especially the first book when he’s gazing at their reflections in the Mirror Of Erised.
I didn’t really cry, but I was pretty sad at the end of 1984. The whole book was almost about Winston Smith’s work at beating the system in his own private way, and then he’s tortured, beaten, and broken. “He loved Big Brother!” How sad!
On the same note, I was sad when Boxer died in Animal Farm and Benjamin, the cynical donkey, is destressed and starts chasing the glue truck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-I cried at the end, when Harry meets Cedric’s parents and the scene at the feast, where the halls are draped in black. Dumbledore’s speech got me-his message to the kids that when they had to choose between doing what was right and what was easy, to remember what happened to a good person who crossed paths with evil. How to be Good-A husband and wife have been drifting apart. The husband is a bitter, sarcastic person, but has a spiritual awakening and realizes he had become unloving toward his wife. She finds him going through a box of stuff from their wedding day and pesters him about it, asking who gave it to them, what it her mother, and wasn’t it her’s too? He finally tells her that he saved it, because it was such a happy day. It’s a beautiful moment. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood-The love of a girl’s life goes away to fly jets in WWII, because he wants to impress his father. His plane is shot down over France. Madame Bovary-for Charles, not Emma. All I can say is “Poor bastard.” Among other things, after his wife’s suicide he finds letters from one of her lovers.
These are just the one’s that come to mind at the moment.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-I cried at the end, when Harry meets Cedric’s parents and the scene at the feast, where the halls are draped in black. Dumbledore’s speech got me-his message to the kids that when they had to choose between doing what was right and what was easy, to remember what happened to a good person who crossed paths with evil. How to be Good-A husband and wife have been drifting apart. The husband is a bitter, sarcastic person, but has a spiritual awakening and realizes he had become unloving toward his wife. She finds him going through a box of stuff from their wedding day and pesters him about it, asking who gave it to them, was it her mother, and wasn’t it her’s too? He finally tells her that he saved it, because it was such a happy day. It’s a beautiful moment. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood-The love of a girl’s life goes away to fly jets in WWII, because he wants to impress his father. His plane is shot down over France. Madame Bovary-for Charles, not Emma. All I can say is “Poor bastard.” Among other things, after his wife’s suicide he finds letters from one of her lovers.
These are just the one’s that come to mind at the moment.
The only one I can think of right now is Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, usually when young Toni’s mother abandons her and sometimes when young Charis is molested.
Oh, and Little Women always made me cry as a kid – not when Beth dies, but when Jo refuses Laurie. Why, Jo? Why??
The first time I ever cried after reading a book was when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I had just finished the last book in the “Ralph S. Mouse” series by Beverly Cleary. I knew there would never be any more stories. I would never be able to visit that world again, even rereading the same story would never be quite the same. I still become sad after coming to the end of a particularly good book or series.
Only two books have ever made me actually cry (Only counting books I read as an adult, here.) Spoilers ahead, please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times.
The first, actually a short story, was Harlan Ellison’s The Deathbird. Not the first time I read it, when it was moving and sad, but the second, the night I had my dog Axle put down. But when I was done, I felt a thousand percent better. Most cathartic read ever.
The second was John Irving’s The World According to Garp, when Garp is killed (Pointless, terrible, tragic death). And then Irving goes on to describe how every other character, no matter how minor, eventually dies. Somehow, Jenny’s was the worst. Anyone in that book deserved a happy ending, it was her. Man, I just couldn’t handle that.
The part of Garp that always gets to me is the crash. The first time I read it, of course, it was just a terrible shock. The second time, I knew it was coming, and I began to see the foreshadowing being layered in dozens of pages in advance. The sick dread about what was going to just built and built.
Considering that I’m a voracious bookworm, you would think that I would have encountered a significnat number of tear-jerking books.
But actually, only one book has ever succeeded in getting me to shed tears. It was Where the Red Fern Grows, which I read in the sixth grade for a class assignment.
His use of redemption and sacrifice just always works. Two examples spring right to mind: The doomed lovers in the most recent Dark Tower installment - that one is an unapologetic tearjerker. Also, the scene in Dreamcatcher where they pick up Duddits to take him to certain death, to fight the final battle. I’ve read King’s books all my life, and I have really never been disappointed. He just absolutely rules as a writer.
For science fiction, I recall during Card’s Speaker For The Dead I couldn’t continue reading at many points because the tears were just spilling from my eyes.
I’m reading The Princess Bride presently, and it is deeply moving. True love - what a concept.
Don’t forget Charlotte’s Web. If that book doesn’t make you cry, you are a machine.
I remembered another one, while reading about the Stephen King books.
I’ve actually cried at Cujo. I cried in the end when the narrator is explaining that Cujo just wanted to be a good dog, and would have given his life to save The Boy (if that had been required), but was stricken with a terrible disease. I think I also cried during Tad Trenton’s death, when he dies at the exact same time as Cujo. He was so close to being saved, then he dies.
Other King books that I almost cried at: Carrie, when she dies and the only one who understood that she wasn’t a monster was Sue. And The Dead Zone, when Sarah is visiting his grave. Everyone thinks he’s a monster too, never knowing he saved the world from destruction.
I can only remember it happening once. I was about 10 or 11 and was reading Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It is a scene where Nemo has taken the Nautilus (sp?) to the scene of a shipwreck and he describes the image of a mother having lashed herself to the mast of the ship, holding her child up (trying to hold the child above the wave as the ship sinks) and that their corpses remain in this position. Incredibly effective writing, even in translation.
First memorable time was John Steakley’s Armor, which was on the surface an action tale of power-armored folks fighting endless waves of Bugs. The focus of the novel was a refugee, who got into the military to run away from personal tragedy, and essentially to commit suicide-by-Bug. The problem was, he just never died, developing a sort of split personality; the part of him that never gave up got personalized as “The Engine” and took over in combats, and by a combination of it and luck he kept being the sole survivor of battalions and such. And as time went on, the Engine part of him consumed him more and more utterly, making it harder and harder for him to be human.
The climax of that portion of the story was his catharsis; an old friend had finally tracked him down, got him alone, and forced him to remember the past he was fleeing and hiding from. And something about how his breakdown was written got to me very strongly the first time I read it.
In the same book, there’s also a just horrible bit of character speech about a puppy that fell into a well, and that hit me as a far more heavy-handed bit of manipulation. Still effective at the time.
Jacob Have I Loved makes me cry almost every time. I just feel right along with Sara Louise. All of the resentment and anger, mixed in with all of that guilt. So much emotion, I just have to cry.
There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom is another one. (I seem to be especially vulnerable to kids’ books now) Elementary school kids can be so mean to each other and I just feel so sorry for Bradley. The ending is so sad, but it’s so happy.
Happy endings make me cry so much. I guess it’s that whole emotional wringer.
jessica
Count me in with dlb on The Man Who Travelled in Elephants. Beautiful story. And also with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
A couple I wanted to mention were early works by Orson Scott Card. Both Songmaster and Hart’s Hope were biographies of fictional people, who were so alive to me by the end of them I wept buckets.
But the topper for me is John Crowley’s Little, Big. That book is an emotional smorgasbord. One of the most absorbing books ever.
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Dumas. First, the whole horrible setup in the beginning, then some of the more emotional bits in the rest. This is one of the most incredible books I have ever read. (I’ve even had a history prof start to cry in class while describing the plot)
Also, Cyrano de Bergerac, by Rostand. Especially in the original French. The last scene … well, if you’ve read it, you understand.
Oh, and some of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Death comics. Do they count?
Well, I’ve gotten prickly-eyed over C.S. Lewis & E. Nesbit but don’t tell anyone. They’ll think I’ve gone soft.
However, the only book that moved me to actual tears (and I had to stop reading for awhile) was A Beggar in Jerusalem by Elie Wiesel.
Specifically, the passage where, just before the 7 Days War, a tzaddick has locked himself into his study to pray:
“I have never questioned Your justice, Your mercy, though their ways have often confounded me. I have submitted to everything, accepted everything, not with resignation but with love and gratitude. I have accepted punishments, absurdities, slaughters, I have even let pass under silence the death of one million children. In the shadow of the holocaust’s unbearable mystery, I have strangled the outcry, the anger, the desire to be finished with You and myself once and for all. I have chosen prayer, devotion. I have tried to transform into song the dagger You have so often plunged into my submissive heart.”
