Depressing books/movies

The Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition

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What is the most depresssing book you've ever read? For me, it's got to be 1984. It goes beyond just sad. It's the kind of book that leaves you just staring at it for a while, while a sick feeling of dread crawls all over you.
(I'm not going into why it's so sad...mostly because we don't have a spoiler tag)

But there are a few different kinds of "sad" when it comes to books.

1. Sappy. Like when it's supposed to be sad, but isn't. This makes me laugh, like when it's trying reeeeeally hard to be touching, but fails miserably
2. Sad. This is when you realize that what's happening is sad, but don't really connect. It doesn't make me laugh, but not sad enough to cry over.
3. Not sure what to call this...I am reluctant to use the term "moving' or "touching"...but I guess that qualifies. This is the kind of sad that does make me cry...It's sad, but not hopeless. Like Les Miserables, or Return of the King (the very end nearly always kills me...).
4. Depressing. Like 1984. This is even too sad to cry over...and I just sit there thinking "Oh...God...."

But it does take quite a bit to get me to cry over a book. A character can't just die, I have to like the person, AND the death has to be tragic. Like many of them in Les Miserarables.... Or if I've read a really long book, and the main character dies at the end.

Goodbyes get me too. Like the very end of Return of the King. I was inconsoleable the first time I read it, and I can't watch the movie alone without weeping (I control myself when I'm with people)

So the point of this thread:
1. What is the most depressing book you've read.
2. Ever cried over a book?
3. What makes a book depressing for you?
 
Wow, I've actually been thinking a lot about depressing books and movies recently. Haha.

-The most depressing book I've ever read... hmmm... Probably "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson. It's not really that "sad" it's just angering and depressing. It makes you really, really appreciate your life. The movie they made out of it made me sob like crazy.

-Yes, I've cried over many books. Most of the books I cry in really aren't even sad. Like Breaking Dawn, Harry Potter 7, The Host, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, The Last Battle, etc. For some reason, I don't cry as much in movies though (even though movies can make me even more emotional than books). But I just saw "The Secret Life of Bees" last night, and that made me REALLY cry.

-That is an interesting question. For me, "depressing" is not "sad". For me, depressing has more to do with the tone of the book, the setting, and the characters' personalities. Like in Speak, the narrator was a pessimist, and the school that she attended just made you want to wrinkle your nose.
 
Stephen Donaldson's two-volume fantasy "The Mirror of Her Dreams" was depressing and irritating. All the way through, the good guys, of both sexes, had to suffer from repeated and protracted failures, defeats, physical injuries and psychological humiliations, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, while the bad guys got to skate along doing whatever they pleased with impunity. And even when Donaldson GRUDGINGLY allowed the good guys to win in the end, the bad guys got off so easily, with NO suffering at all, it was like they were being given anaesthesia before being killed.
 
dude where the red fern grows is so sad! I hated it! The dogs shouldn't have died!!!!!!!!!!!!


and you know what sometimes I hate walk to remember cuz they get married and then she dies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:mad::(
 
dayhawk68 said:
dude where the red fern grows is so sad! I hated it! The dogs shouldn't have died!!!!!!!!!!!!


and you know what sometimes I hate walk to remember cuz they get married and then she dies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:mad::(
Click to expand...

Thanks for telling us what happens.
 
Forum jam-ups delayed my posting this by at least 5 minutes

Dayhawk, the blue butterflies in your graphic are very similar to ones that appeared in some of my sign-of-comfort incidents after Mary was taken. One, for instance, flew BESIDE me, like an escort, on a visit to Mary's grave.

Janalee enjoyed "A Walk To Remember." She had no idea at the time that she would likewise die too young and leave me behind.
 
One of the most beautiful and saddest movies ever is Pan's Labyrinth. At least it is in my opinion. This movie was so sad!
I hated it when Vidal killed this doctor and when the mother died. But the end was the most saddest of all. For those who haven't seen it, go watch it and keep your tissues with you. I highly recommend this movie
 
Well... depressing... hmmm... I've cried for movies, but I can't think of it at the moment...
The one I do remember, though, is Phantom of the Opera. That made me cry. It's depressing sometimes because you can almost relate to the character... like the Titanic was sad, but it didn't make me cry because... I've never been in love or anything so I couldn't relate. But being all alone like the Phantom... I can relate. So the situation might be sad, but you might not cry unless you can relate.
 
Sad as in crying: The Outsiders by S.E Hinton. Makes me cry every time. At sevral diffrent times in the book. But I love this book anyways.

Depressing: The Handmaids Tale by Margret Atwood. Never EVER read it. It is too horrible for words. Like 1984 it's a dystopian text. But it is the worst. Just... Urg...
A clockwork Orange is the same but not quite as bad. This is also incredibly confuseing...
 
I don't think I've ever read a "depressing" book. I've read books that made me cry, but it was in a good way. I've cried when reading "Beauty," some of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, all of the Narnia books, most of Gail Carson Levine's books, "Pride and Prejudice," and the last Harry Potter book, to name a few. :p Most of those made me cry because I'm a hopeless romantic, but the others were just touching or sad (LOTR, Narnia, and HP).

I've also been known to cry often during movies (when I'm alone...I hold it back when I'm around other people :p), for the same reasons I cry for books: either there is a sad or touching moment, or something is really romantic and sweet. :eek: The only really depressing movie I've seen is "Gone With the Wind," but that's just my opinion (as already stated in the disliked movies thread).
 
A few years ago, I decided to read some WWII books. I thinki read too many in a row because they did really get me down. One of the most intense was "I Have Lived a Thousand Years" by Livia Bitton-Jackson. That book is a novelized third-person account of the author's life when she was 13-14 years old. She was a Jewish girl who lived in Hungary when the Nazis invaded and took over. For that year, she and her mother were sent to different labor and death camps where they barely survived, sometimes by sheer luck.

The only book that actually got me emotional enough to cry was "Bridge to Terabithia". The scene where Jess' father is conforting a grieving Jess by the stream gets me even if I read just those lines. The recent movie also made me cry, but not like the book.

I don't think I cried at the end of "Where the Red Fern Grows" but I do know that was the first book that had a major impact on me. I was about 8 or 9 when I read that book.

Another movie that has made me cry is "My Girl". I am nearly in constant tears from the point when the officer comes to Mr. Sultenfuss' home until the end of the movie with Mrs. Sennett talkking to Vada.

MrBob
 
Yay! MrBob reminded me! It was a WWII book...
Yes. The Diary of Anne Frank. It didn't make me cry, but it made me really really sad thinking about all those other girls like Anne who had lives ahead of them but died because of the Nazis... then I read another book about WWII in which the main character died... made me depressed for so long!
 
Grave of the Fireflies

...its an anime movie. It was so sad. T_T It portrayed so realisticly the conflict some people have to face during a war.

And Bridge To Terabithia, too...

Books dont make me cry. :p
I guess hearing voices and music adds all the more emotion to me than just reading plain words in print.
 
I sometimes cry while reading books, when a favorite character of mine dies. Yet these books are not depressing in general, they are epic and show that in the fight with evil, sometimes good people die. I dislike depressing books, like works of Robin Hobb and Stephen R. Donaldson, who Copprefox mentioned.
Same about movies. I appreciate when a moving scene or something tragic make my eyes wet, like the end of "The Dark Knight" or the tragic fall of Anakin Skywalker in "The Revenge of the Sith".
But intentionally depressing movies like "12 monkeys" for example I hate.
 
"Gone With The Wind"--as a book AND as a film--is depressing to me, because the establishment tells me that I'm supposed to regard it as a "love story," when all it's REALLY about is idiots and scoundrels.
 
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