the most memorable scene you have ever read in a story

[cacian]

what scene have you read that left you with that single memory never to be forgotten?

[coeus]

Hard to pick just one, so I won't. :) Here are a few of my favorites. I will try to avoid spoilers, so excuse my vagueness.

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee - Boo Radley, 'nuff said.
Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens - The last few pages, where Sydney Carton becomes one of my favorite characters in literature
Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Patterson - When Jess comes back from the museum
Enders Game, Orson Scott Card - when the game is revealed
Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls - the ending, especially when the eponymous red fern makes an appearance
I am Legend, Richard Matheson - Everything after the capture
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes - the whole ending, particularly after sending Alice away

[kev67]

It's from a memoir rather than a work of fiction. Robert Graves recounted a story in his book, Goodbye to all that about his time in the trenches. A soldier tried to get himself a non-life threatening injury, called a cushie, which would allow him to be invalided out of the army. He stuck his hand over the top and nothing happened. Then he stood on his head and put his feet over the top, nothing happened. Then he peeked over the top and was shot between the eyes by a German sniper.

[Darcy88]

Stendhal's Red and the Black contains several scenes that rank among my all time favourites, as does Don Quixote, but my favourite scene ever might be out of Dickens' Great Expectations where Pip says the following:

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

[Lykren]

I think this is a great question, and what literature should really be measured by.

Let's see...

The playing-block courtship of Kitty by Levin, Anna Karenina

The attempted suicide of Ukifune, The Tale of Genji

Sirens, Ulysses

Natasha Rostova singing again, War and Peace

Elizabeth's epiphany regarding Darcy, Pride and Prejudice

[*Classic*Charm*]

The final scene from The Grapes of Wrath. Rose of Sharon in the barn. Startling and beautiful beyond words.

The scene in Tess of the D'Urbervilles in which Tess and Angel reveal to each other their indiscretions, and their reactions to each other in turn. I had a physical reaction to that scene.

[prendrelemick]

I think this is a great question, and what literature should really be measured by.

Let's see...

The playing-block courtship of Kitty by Levin, Anna Karenina

The attempted suicide of Ukifune, The Tale of Genji

Sirens, Ulysses

Natasha Rostova singing again, War and Peace

Elizabeth's epiphany regarding Darcy, Pride and Prejudice


Sirens for me as well. I was just gob-smacked when I first read that.

The Death of Prince Andrei in War and Peace.

Young Rostov being unhorsed and chased by French soldiers, also War and Peace.

Winnie the Pooh floating up to a bees nest, clutching a balloon.

Isabella Thorpe and Catherine Moorland out walking in Bath, from Northanger Abbey.


It really is a great question - because the way things stick in your mind is very personal and not something you can choose. Trivial scenes can remain with you, to be played over and over in your head, long after the great turning points and denouements of Literature have receded.

[ennison]

There is a scene from a novel that I read as a child. The novel and its author forgotten long since but the scene remembered. The story involved a messenger travelling through Europe during the Thirty Years War. He spends a night in an inn where his presence is noted. When he retires to bed the author builds the atmosphere very intensely including the shadows of a tree moving against the window . "... Then a step upon the stair and nothing more. A low creak and murmured whisper.
Silence.
A slow creak upon the stair.
And nothing more.
A hand upon the door.
And nothing more..." You get the drift. It has stuck with me even though the novel itself has long evaporated. Likewise many other scenes from novels as diverse as "Joanna At Daybreak" by RC Hutchinson and Tolstoys "Resurrection" to Robert Harris' "The Ghost" and Peake' "Gormenghast". What is it about that? Something I think about the writer's total engagement of the senses and the intellect even for just a paragraph or two. Fairly ordinary writers can achieve that but I guess we like best the ones who give us that most often. Looking at the little extract above it struck me as a child that it was full of suspense and the writer (some 19th century Henty/ Strang type) was breaking the normal rules with his paragraphing and use of "and" to start sentences.