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Thread: A depressing book.

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    A depressing book.

    Just finished reading 1984 by George Orwell and I have to admit it's end was pathetically depressing.
    It really wrenched my heart to read the elaboration of process of breaking down of the spirit of man. The book was deep, thought provoking and deeply disturbing.
    It really made me think how hard hearted the author could be. How he could abandon his characters which he so painstakingly created?

    As I want to explore more about the genre, i wanted to know your views on the novel (of course, only if read) and/or which book you read you think stands out to be most depressing for you.

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    Registered User kev67's Avatar
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    I started reading the book when I was about sixteen. I gave up about three-quarters of the way through when I realised Winston was not going to escape, join the counter-revolution and bring down Big Brother. I finally finished reading it a year or two ago. It is a very clever book, but as you say, disturbing and depressing.

    Depressing books I have read include The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Daisy Miller by Henry James, and The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is another famous dystopian novel, written about a decade before 1984. I found it more interesting than depressing.
    According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
    Charles Dickens, by George Orwell

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    Try The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It's a depressing, but really addictive read. It also has some legitimate American history to it as well.

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    Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
    While I have to admit the novel is a tad heavy going in the first half, but once we get Jim away from the whole Patna experience and on to Patusan, what we have is a rip roaring adventure tale that makes Wilbur Smith seem a lightweight.

    'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin is in my opinion a good place to start your 'depressing' reading quest.
    Last edited by Prince Smiles; 11-06-2013 at 08:51 AM. Reason: grammatical error: read = reading

  5. #5
    Most of Cormac McCarthy depresses me. I think The Crossing was the worst. That's not to say I didn't love the books, I did. Except for No Country for Old Men I recommend him highly.

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    For depressing, it's hard to go wrong with Cormac McCarthy, John Steinbeck, or Thomas Hardy. Honestly, pretty much anything written by them would fit the bill, but I would specifically suggest The Road and Blood Meridian by McCarthy, Jude the Obscure by Hardy and Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck as particularly bleak.

    Other things off the top of my head:
    The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
    A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
    Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

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    I think the 'sorrows of young werther' was the first book to give rise to a series of copycat suicides. The romantic description of sadness, unrequitted love and suicide will be encouragement for those already clinically depressed patients to copy. There is some suggestion that avatar may have the same effect. Ditto the graphic news of korean pop stars' suicides.
    1994 is not depressing. It ridiculed winston, warns us against big brother, doublespeak etc. The sadness is not transmissible, nor can the story make a depressed man decide to die.
    So i would like to clarify that 1994 warns and stirs us to believe orwell's propaganda.. like mark anthony rousing the polloi against brutus. It is certainly not depressogenic.
    Last edited by luhsun; 11-09-2013 at 10:24 AM.

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    J.G. Ballard has written several dystopias, any will do, maybe start with "the Drowned World", which is fifty years before its time in considering the effects of global warming.

    "Scientist gone wrong" usually makes for a depressing novel, especially if you identify with the lead character. Try:

    H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man
    Stevenson - Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
    Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
    George Eliot - Middlemarch (doubles up as an example of the "depressing marriage" genre, of which Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" probably leads the field. Careful though there are many themes in this book, some of which are quite positive.)

    Anything by Dostoevsky is very depressing, try "Notes from the Underground" for starters.

    Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is very depressing, maybe even topping Hardy in the "bad marriage" category. Careful though, it has some positive sub-themes.

    1994 is perhaps not depressing, 1984 certainly is! Thinking of a boot stomping on my face for eternity doesn't get me to a good place.

    Of all of these I think the "most depressing" has to be "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy. Freud, a very depressing author, said that to avoid total unhappiness you need love & work to go reasonably well. For Jude both these aspects of his life go *very* wrong, without the need for any Big Brother to dismantle them. Winston Smith is at least getting "love" right when left to his own devices, and his work is going OK, until he's dragged into the torture chamber. For Jude love and work are torture themselves, and the torture goes on from the beginning to the end of the novel, and it all happens in an everyday world, so you think, "this could happen, here and now, to me," without a totalitarian state needing to get involved.
    Last edited by mal4mac; 11-09-2013 at 11:48 AM.

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    Sorry. I knew it was 1984. I read it in 1990 while i was an undergraduate. Dont know what freudian slip came over me, and i typed it wrong twice; considering 1994 was a pretty kind year to me! Boot stomping on my face forever imagery wont make us sad- it makes us angry at big brother and filled with contempt at winston for being so unresourceful. Even the pussy riots girls stand tall

    Invisible man, jekyll and hyde or frankenstein are not sad stories. They are cautionary warning stories about arrogant scientists. I feel they elicit the righteous comeuppance, serve them right lessons aimed at daredevil scientists.

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    Quote Originally Posted by luhsun View Post
    Sorry. I knew it was 1984. I read it in 1990 while i was an undergraduate. Dont know what freudian slip came over me, and i typed it wrong twice; considering 1994 was a pretty kind year to me! Boot stomping on my face forever imagery wont make us sad- it makes us angry at big brother and filled with contempt at winston for being so unresourceful. Even the pussy riots girls stand tall
    I think that's a bit unfair on Winston. How do you stand up to someone as powerful as Big Brother? Is it alright for him to get stomped on just because he wasn't clever enough to escape detection? I was sad when I saw no way out for Winston.

    Quote Originally Posted by luhsun View Post
    Invisible man, jekyll and hyde or frankenstein are not sad stories. They are cautionary warning stories about arrogant scientists. I feel they elicit the righteous comeuppance, serve them right lessons aimed at daredevil scientists.
    Even though the scientists did some bad or stupid things, I still felt sorry for them, and it leaves me generally depressed that science can lead to such bad results.

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    TobeFrank Paulclem's Avatar
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    The most depressing thing about Blood Meridian is that it is based on actual events - the scalping bounty offered by the Mexican governors when they were having trouble with the local tribes. It's a fantastic rendition by McCarthy which he supplements with his skilful evocation of the landscape and the mystical element.

    I found 1984 by turns a bit tedious, short sighted and perhaps overlong. On the other hand it was a great evocation of totalitarian Russia in an English context, though I think the actual situation in Russia at the time was much more depressing and fatal for the many in the gulag system. The core ideas we can lift from it are resonant in lots of ways today though, and I think that makes it a great book.

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    Agree that i am unfair to winston. But winston or the equivalent boxer of animal farm are both one dimensional caricatures of orwell's propaganda against communism, indictments against trusting commoners who saw good things or trying to live within the system

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    Quote Originally Posted by luhsun View Post
    Agree that i am unfair to winston. But winston or the equivalent boxer of animal farm are both one dimensional caricatures of orwell's propaganda against communism, indictments against trusting commoners who saw good things or trying to live within the system
    Orwell was writing under post war reluctance to criticise Stalinist Russia because of the heavy losses they incurred during the war. I think what he wrote was less akin to propaganda against communism as a debunking of the myth of Stalinism - that myth being that it was a communist country.

    Having said that, I don't think Winston is a particularly well developed character.

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    The publishers were reluctant to publish because ussr was an ally during ww2. I dont think orwell, after his problems with the communists in spain would pull any punches. Winston's character is not well developed, but i think orwell purposely develop him into a stupid vain ambitious pathetic man to further orwell's propaganda. On the other hand, benjamin was truly wise under the yoke of animal farm.

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    The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner is the most depressing book I've ever read, but it is also one of my favourites. I remember walking around the house aimlessly after reading the Quentin section. I was completely drained.
    Last edited by HSPS; 11-10-2013 at 11:25 PM.

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