Saddest stories ever?

[7th caged tiger]

I'd like some suggestions. I'm not looking for crap hollywood stuff where everything goes right at the end, perhaps tradgedies or an ending that is unresolved or just sad

[Kyriakos]

You could try some ancient tragedies, such as Euripedes' The Bachai.
Or if you are looking for more modern things, read some Kafka, his stories are always with a bad ending.
Perhaps the Penal Colony, or A Hunger Artist, for starters :)

[kiki1982]

The Metamorphosis as well ;)

Cyrano de Bergerac is pretty sad if you think about it... That's a play.

Anything Naturalist should do the trick, I think. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is sad, by Hardy, as is Jude the Obscure, but that needs a bit more knowledge of Hardy. I susptect, though, that his other books are about the same. The Mayor of Casterbridge, at first sight, seems also pretty sad...

[Babak Movahed]

Madame Bovary would be a good choice depending on your opinion of Emma Bovary. In the sense that nothing really gets resolved for the better, and even innocent characters get an untimely end, then this might be the sad story your looking for.

[Gregory Samsa]

"Of Mice and Men" is pretty sad.

[Seasider]

The Odour of Chrysanthemums a short story by DH Lawrence is very sad.
Almost anything by Zola ...L'Assommoir is perhaps the grimmest, but Germinal comes close. Jude the Obscure by Hardy. Romeo and Juliet A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. The Little Mermaid The Little Match Girl or The Snow Queen by Hans Anderson. An American Tragedy by Dreiser For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway.

Should get you through several boxes of tissues

[kiki1982]

Now Evelyn Waugh has been mentioned... I found Brideshead Revisited quite a sad story... Mainly, though, because of the atmosphere around it and doomed Byronic hero Sebastian (without actually wanting to give away too much)...

I gather that Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) is quite sad, although I haven't read it. It's going to take a while yet, although I can already understand the first sentence :thumbsup:.

The Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe) is pretty sad on two levels: the end and his incredible naïvety.

[dfloyd]

The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night do not end up with a typical Hollywood ending. Neither does Great Expectations if you read the ending originally written by Dickens. He had to rewrite the ending at the urging of his editor.

[Transmodernism]

As has been noted above, The Great Gatsby is very sad. A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court is also extremely sad/depressing. Bleak House is probably the saddest Dickens novel, as far as I know; either that or The Old Curiosity Shop.

For a very moving and tragic look at the horrors of war I would highly recommend All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame has to be one of the saddest French novels of all time—highly good. Or, if you want a satire of optimism that will wipe the smile off the most giddy and overcaffeinated optimist, try Voltaire's Candide (a word of caution: don't read this book if you want to be happy; and don't read it if you're going through a really hard time in your life).

[Emil Miller]

Une Vie ( A Woman's Life ) by Guy de Maupassant. The life depicted is eventful and very sad but, after all of its tribulations, it reaches it's resolution with what must be one of the best last sentences ever written.

[DanielBenoit]

Or, if you want a satire of optimism that will wipe the smile off the most giddy and overcaffeinated optimist, try Voltaire's Candide (a word of caution: don't read this book if you want to be happy; and don't read it if you're going through a really hard time in your life).

I found it funny how you used the word "overcaffeinated", for even though Voltaire wasn't an optimist, he surely was overcaffeinated: The man was known to drink coffee over twenty times a day!:yikes::yikes:

[Lulim]

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is very very sad.

Also, there is a "fairy tale", told by a grandmother to her grandchild, in Georg Buechners "Woyzeck". The fairy tale starts out in similar fashion as "The Star Money", but everything gets worse and worse ...

[Transmodernism]

I found it funny how you used the word "overcaffeinated", for even though Voltaire wasn't an optimist, he surely was overcaffeinated: The man was known to drink coffee over twenty times a day!:yikes::yikes:

Didn't know that! It's quite amazing that all that coffee did nothing to brighten his outlook on life!

I read Candide when I was going through a really hard time. I knew that it was supposed to be funny and satirical, and I needed a laugh. I thought it would cheer me up.

Wow.

[stlukesguild]

Euripides' Medea
Shakespeare's King Lear
Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

[Seasider]

Book IV of The Aeneid. It tells the story of the love affair between Aeneas and Queen Dido. It ends in tragedy because Aeneas has a mission to found Rome and he sneaks off without a goodbye and she mounts her own funeral pyre and dies.
Very sad. Put not your trust in Princes is the message.

[togre]

I HATED Vanity Fair because of the ending. Not the shedding tears of sorrow sadness, but the "this is uncomfortable lack of happiness that real life has" nature of the ending.

Along the same lines Twain's short story Soldier Boy, I believe, tugs a few heart strings.

[MystyrMystyry]

I found it funny how you used the word "overcaffeinated", for even though Voltaire wasn't an optimist, he surely was overcaffeinated: The man was known to drink coffee over twenty times a day!:yikes::yikes:

His bladder must've hurt something rotten - no wonder he was such a miseryguts

[Silvia]

Since Zola has been mentioned, why not try Giovanni Verga, too? I would suggest his novella Rosso Malpelo, or even his History of Capinera, both of which are very sad stories.

[Wilde woman]

Cyrano de Bergerac is pretty sad if you think about it... That's a play.

I second this! This is one play whose ending turns me into a blubbering mess of emotions. It's such a beautiful, moving, tragic yet inevitable ending.

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes was also really sad. And, if you're okay with reading sentimental children's lit, Where the Red Fern Grows was one of the first books that made me cry as a child.

Also, John Gardner's novel Grendel ends on a rather ambiguous, but tragic note. But to fully appreciate it, you have to have a pretty detailed knowledge of Beowulf.

[Kyriakos]

Up to some point, Gogol's the Overcoat is pretty sad/tragic. The actual ending is not, but where the story could have ended is sad.

I second Flowers for Algernon :)

[Three Sparrows]

I completely agree with Cyrano de Bergerac! My other sad choices would be, The Toilers of the Sea, by Hugo (I sobbed at the ending-I know, I'm a wimp), Tess of the D'urbavilles, by Hardy, and Demons, by Dostoevsky.

[TheChilly]

"Hogg".

That is all.

[arrytus]

whenever i forget what writing is all about i read the first story in a book i found when i was 15 at a therapeutic boarding school [which is to say isolated and mandatory] from a collection called The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories edited by Tobias Wolfe.

the 1st story is called RIVER OF NAMES by Dorothy Allison.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Euripides' Medea
Shakespeare's King Lear
Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Really? That seems more of a morbid black comedy.

I agree with Of Mice and Men. When I think of sad stories, that's the first one to always pop in my head.

[MystyrMystyry]

Carson MacCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Ballad of the Sad Cafe

You want to get down? These two masterpieces

[Seasider]

I forgot the wonderful short story by Alphonse Daudet La Chevre de M.Seguin. It's a perfect story and very sad. The French is not too difficult and the story is worth the effort.

[Gerda13]

For me, "Children of Hurin" was the saddest one, ever...:bawling:

Why couldn't they live normal lives? I'm going to puke and then hurt the one responsible!:puke::mad5:

[Night_Lamp]

To name something more modern than the majority of post thus far in the thread, I found Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes to be among the saddest books of struggle and poverty I have ever read; and it's a true story.

[ZiggyStardust]

Johnny Got His Gun... THE most depressing book you will ever read. If you want to have a good day don't read this book. Just saying

[hanzklein]

I recently read the play Richard II by W.S., it was really sad. It reminded me, strangely, of the Metamorphosis by Kafka with the whole theme of one person flourishing at the expense of suffering of another. The real story of Richard II is even sadder than the play, as he probably died of starvation (just like Gregor!).

[weltanschauung]

pfft, theres nothing as tragic as love stories. so here goes two pretty devastating ones:

dangerous liaisons -choderlos de laclos
diary of a seducer - soren kierkegaard