For discussion

[sabotabby]

What's the most depressing ending in a work of fiction that you can think of?

Oh yes, and why?

Comments

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

Don says "Vanyel: The Angsting"

That after giving 50 years or whatever of his life to service at the expense of his own wellbeing and happiness, Vanyel gets sucked into a centuries-long afterlife of further service.

For me, I am suddenly (and exhaustedly) thinking of the end of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

That wasn't a happy ending?

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Right of the top of my head, War and Peace.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

a) A theoretically worst ending, or does it have to be in a real book?

b) Do I have to have read it?

[sabotabby]

a) Your choice. But I find it hard to imagine a theoretical worst ending. I mean, the heat death of the universe, perhaps? But if I think of books or movies that I've genuinely sobbed (or cringed) at, it hasn't been so much because everyone dies. It's because I identify with the characters and something awful happens to them.

But I'd be interested in seeing what your theoretical worst ending is.

b) Nope.

[jvmatucha.livejournal.com]

The first thing I thought about was the ending to Crime and Punishment. Dunno why, the whole book was purty gloomsy.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

I find it really depressing as well.

[apperception.livejournal.com]

That would be the end of Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Really? I have always read that as a hopeful ending. His sister is the future and all that.

[corbet.livejournal.com]

A tie between Doomsday Book and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. It's been awhile and I can't remember exactly the details of how they ended, but I do remember they left me going omg-kill-me-now-I'm-so-depressed.

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Old Yellar.

[homewardangel.livejournal.com]

Jude the Obscure. The son hangs all of his infant siblings and then himself because "we are too many." Sue feels it represents God's anger and leaves him. Then he dies.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Do any Hardy novels not have depressing endings (and middles and beginnings)

[streetdreams.livejournal.com]

Requiem for a Dream.

But if that's too cliched, Geek Love left me speechless for a few days.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Lina Wetmuller's Seven Beauties had a pretty depressing middle 90% with the main character literally and figuratively swimming through a cesspool and prostituting himself to save his own skin in a Nazi death camp, ending up with a happy ending - returning home to find that not only were all of his sisters forced by poverty into prostitution but so was the little girl that had a cute crush on him before the war.

[rojonoir.livejournal.com]

Wertmuller, actually.

I picked it up from the rental store because the cover implied it was a wacky comedy with WWII as a backdrop.

[herkyjerkydance.livejournal.com]

Super obvious, probably, but: 1984. I first read it when I was 11 or 12 and it was the first book with a non-happy ending that I ever read - the idea of a massive authoritarian government that inexorably crushes all opposition left me depressed for weeks.

not meant for use as a playbook

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

1984 also takes my personal comes-to-mind-first medal - it definitely makes top 5 because of the combined strength of general writing quality, downer-ness of ending, and real-world relevance and plausibility.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I have a copy of an early draft version of the script to Blade Runner that's pretty harsh.

Static had a tremendously depressing ending.

[hopita.livejournal.com]

I'm not coming up with a choice for fiction right now, but It's Always Something is the book with the most depressing ending. It's Gilda Radner's autobiography, and she's just so sure that she's gonna beat it. And we all know how that ended ...

[rrrao.livejournal.com]

Robert Cormier's 'The Bumblebee Flies Anyway'. (For 'young adults', by the guy who did the Chocolate War [apparently the better read of his stuff, except by me].)

Holy shit. I dunno if we're allowed to spoil the endings here, for those who haven't read the book, but basically all these misfit kids who have been institutionized in some kind of mental hospital for youth make it onto the sloping roof with their hand-made go-cart, and go hurling off the edge to their death. (Hence the cruel, cruel irony of the title.) I'm not sure if they'll let 12-14 year olds read that stuff anymore. The fact that they were all institutionised was depressing enough.

It became a running in-joke between me and my brother to mail it back and forth around the world as a 'gift' when we were both on different continents - the copy we had must have crossed from India to Europe and back to Toronto at least once or twice...

[sabotabby]

I'm not sure if they'll let 12-14 year olds read that stuff anymore.

Hey, Disney made a movie of Bridge to Terabitha, for God's sake. Which would probably make my (not-very-highbrow) list.

[culpster.livejournal.com]

First thing that popped up was Anna Karenina. That's gonna make me sound like I actually READ, which I don't much, I was on a long hike. But there it is. I won't explain why, spoilers you know.

I WILL say that Godard ripped off the ending for Pierrot Le Fou, only there it's utterly hilarious.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Oh My, it made me cry, and I'm not one for crying at books normally.

[curgoth]

I hated that book with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

[erinlin.livejournal.com]

The Scar. "The main character will be dead five seconds after this book is over. Good riddance!" I really liked the book but holy crap the main character was annoying and pointless.

[curgoth]

Or, "Anything by China Mieville". Awesome author, not good with the happy.

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

The end of Stephan King's Dark Tower Series was so depressing I cried twice while reading it and several times after. I still won't re-read it. I can't believe how emotionally invested I allowed myself to become in that series.

[grimreaperess.livejournal.com]

I like to pick the down point in Children's movies and finish the movies there in my head.

Like in Happy Feet when the main penguin is captured and taken to a zoo and starts hallucinating, I'd end it there. When Horton is frantically pulling out every flower in a field of flowers the same while going insane...THE END.

Fuck happy endings.

[audrawilliams.livejournal.com]

All those romance novels where women fall in love with their rapists at the end.

[roter-terror.livejournal.com]

Any Goosebumps book. Those kids never catch a break!

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

lol

[leitch71.livejournal.com]

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

What springs to mind without great consideration is Jude the Obscure. My recollection of it is that after hundreds of pages of plodding misery, Hardy neither gives you any relief nor any catharsis, maintaining his quizzical tone of "universe sucks, oh well." In a way I couldn't put into words, it reminds me of Mahler.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

(Incidentally, it is one of my 3 or 4 fave books. I love me some misery.)

[northbard.livejournal.com]

Everything ever written by Robin Hobb, who believes a happy ending is when you stop having the character beaten senseless by the entire universe and leave a broken and miserable existence for a few weeks without active assault.

Also China Mieville, for exactly the same reason, but with extra chitin.

[arnavtul.livejournal.com]

Maybe Camus "The Stranger"

or Atonement by someoneIcannotremember. If you have not read it at the end we find out the happy ending was just a fiction, a book within a book.

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

Atonement by Ian McEwan. I didn't find it depressing, I just felt cheated.