A depressing book.

[ashthehunk]

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.

[kev67]

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.

[Vota]

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.

[Prince Smiles]

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.

[Bustrofedon]

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.

[coeus]

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

[luhsun]

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.

[mal4mac]

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.

[luhsun]

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.

[mal4mac]

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.


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.

[Paulclem]

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.

[luhsun]

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

[Paulclem]

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.

[luhsun]

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.

[HSPS]

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.

[qimissung]

The Bluest Eye. The most depressing book ever. A necessary book, but depressing.

[Buh4Bee]

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It grips you by the throat and never lets up. The prose are beautiful, at times, but mainly, the plot is driven by the coldness of the never-ending white winter sky. I am not sure if there is any hope to be found in this book, but the reader may still yearn. It is a depressing book that will captivate you until he end.

[kelby_lake]

Most of Thomas Hardy's novels are depressing :)

[WoodMarc]

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

True, though how developed a character could a person become who really inhabited the world in that book? For this reason, for me he rings fairly true.

[108 fountains]

I'm a huge fan of Hardy's (as you can tell from my signature). The Mayor of Casterbridge ranks up there with the more depressing masterpieces. When the main character, Michael Henchard dies, his daughter Elizabeth-Jane finds his will. It still gives me chills:

MICHAEL HENCHARD'S WILL

"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or
made to grieve on account of me.
"& that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.
"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.
"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.
"& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.
"& that no flours be planted on my grave,
"& that no man remember me.
"To this I put my name.

MICHAEL HENCHARD

[Vota]

Crime and Punishment is pretty depressing. I remember while reading it and for a few weeks after I was a "little off".

[Whosis]

Orwell provides enough time for development and closure as opposed to Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. I had no problem with 1984. In fact, it was the second half of the book that got me interested in it.

[totoro]

It's a very depressing book, but I think that's why it's so memorable. If the end had been happy, I don't think it would have left such a huge impact in literature. As for what book depresses me, I think Great Expectations was pretty depressing - if only because of the whole wedding that never happened thing. I mean, why would someone waste their lives sitting in a wedding dress waiting for the guy that she never got to marry? Move on, meet someone else. I hated that book.

But I love 1984 and Animal Farm so I guess the depressing theme evens out.

[Kitaruni]

Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a book I found to be very depressing. Funny thing is that the book talks about the process of depression in an unintentional way.

[readspider]

If you want a truly depressing book try the '120 days of Sodom' by the Marquis De Sade.

After a while the depression sets in when you have to read another tale about 'he ate what ???'

Those who have survived the book will know....

[Marbles]

If you want a truly depressing book try the '120 days of Sodom' by the Marquis De Sade.

After a while the depression sets in when you have to read another tale about 'he ate what ???'

Those who have survived the book will know....

A truly sick writer, that de Sade.

[AuntShecky]

It is presumptuous for readers to expect a book to make them "feel good."

[Jancarlo]

Yeah I was pretty bummed about Winston's fate, I didn't think they could break him at first, he resisted it like a champ until he literally broke and at the end when he saw Julia, that was depressing. It just wasn't a hero conquers all kind of story, it was more realistic that way.

[qimissung]

Well, that book had to be what it was, but it is a dark, dark book. Thought provoking I can take, but its just hard to watch people's souls destroyed in a novel.

[Emil Miller]

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler is a depressing book about Communism, a system that appears to tick all the right boxes and invariably ends up ticking none. Set in an unnamed USSR it's the story of Rubashov, a revolutionary who is eventually executed by the society he was instrumental in creating. Unlike Orwell's allegorical 1984, Koestler's book tells it straight and is ranked eighth on the Modern Library list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

[mal4mac]

I've just finished reading Last Orders by Graham Swift about four old blokes coming to the end of their miserable lives, having made no attempt to get out their tedious working ruts, or to raise their social lives above beer drinking and betting on the horses. Their wives have left them, or are so distant they might as well not be there. Their children are even bigger failures (two are prostitutes, another brain damaged and, worst of all, one is a used car salesman.) I read this after a Wodehouse omnibus - what a come down!

[Eiseabhal]

"She's Come Undone" by Lamb. It does have its wryness but mainly it is damn depressing.