Literature/Tear Jerker



These scenes in certain books are potential Tear Jerkers to those who've read them. Be careful not to get the pages wet. You'll want to read these scenes again. Also, beware of spoilers.

Take out your hankie

 * Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
 * All Quiet On the Western Front
 * Animal Farm
 * Animorphs
 * Anne of Green Gables
 * The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
 * The Bible
 * Black Beauty
 * Black Company
 * A Christmas Carol
 * Coraline
 * The Dalemark Quartet
 * Discworld
 * A Dirty Job
 * Dragonlance
 * The Dresden Files
 * The Fault in Our Stars
 * Firebird Trilogy
 * Flowers for Algernon
 * The Gathering
 * Gotrek and Felix
 * Hamish Macbeth
 * Harry Potter
 * The Hobbit
 * House of Leaves
 * The Hunger Games
 * I Robot
 * IT
 * Josh Rain
 * The Jungle Book
 * Kafka On the Shore
 * Lamb the Gospel According To Biff
 * The Little Match Girl
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * Magic Kingdom of Landover
 * Mary Poppins
 * Newsflesh
 * The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth
 * One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
 * On My Honor
 * Oscar Wilde
 * The Plague Dogs
 * Redwall
 * The Road
 * The Roman Mysteries
 * Safehold
 * The Scarlet Letter
 * Shannara
 * A Song of Ice and Fire
 * Stardust
 * Star Wars
 * Temeraire
 * To Kill a Mockingbird
 * Tortall Universe
 * Vorkosigan Saga
 * Warhammer 40000
 * Gaunts Ghosts
 * Horus Heresy
 * Warrior Cats
 * Wayside School
 * The Wheel of Time
 * Wing Commander novels
 * Zones of Thought

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."
 * The ending of Pegasus by Robin McKinley, for some.
 * Thirteen. Reasons. Why. ALL OF IT.
 * Infinite Jest. The cockroach scene portrays Orin's desperation and passivity so well and so disturbingly and so strangely that it's impossible not to laugh and impossible not to be absolutely devastated. And Hal's slow descent, his horrific fate, and especially the scene when he looks out the window in the middle of the snow storm and can barely recognize himself are imaginably sad.
 * Hans Christian Andersen
 * The Story Of A Mother, which is so heart-wrenching that it has been known to make people cry just with a plot summary...
 * The original The Little Mermaid, before Disneyfication--the nameless mermaid is condemned to Purgatory, and each time she hears a parent laugh from a good child, she gets years taken off; but each time she hears parents weeping over a bad child, she gets more time.
 * The Fir Tree, in which said tree envies the beauty of Christmas trees--but when it is chosen, after Christmas it dies alone and forgotten in an attic, is promptly chopped up and thrown in the fire.
 * "The Shadow", in which a man's Living Shadow gains a life of its own and becomes his Evil Twin. In the end, he manages to have the original man executed and take over his life. Jesus, Herre Andersen, what were you thinking?! It's made worse because they're all so beautiful.
 * Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Strasser. The fact that a book like this could even be written as a verisimilitude is enough to make some people cry.
 * death at the hand of Sykes in Oliver Twist.
 * This short story by an anonymous author about a poor cat named Ugly.
 * Love You Forever is guaranteed to make any mother with a heart cry. In the mother in the story would sing "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be" to her son. Years later, when she's on her deathbed, the son sings back "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my mommy you'll be." Robert Munsch wrote it after his wife You know what's really painful? Reading that story to someone who can fulfill the role of the helpless mother. That story can hit waaaaay to close to home.
 * The death of the Witch in Gregory Maguire's Wicked. You've known it's coming from the very first page, but when it finally does, the sheer inevitability of it is tragic all on its own.
 * The end of A Tale of Two Cities.

"Only yesterday she had seen Lark work her most powerful charms to keep Rosethorn safe. Not two hours [ago], when Sandry had brought fresh linens to the sickroom, she had discovered Lark weeping, her charms in her lap. All of them had fallen to pieces, unable to work in the face of Rosethorn's disease."
 * Oscar Wilde said that "It would require a heart of stone not to laugh at the.
 * The scene where
 * Some of Agatha Christie's books and short stories contain Tear Jerker moments instead of, or in addition to, the "whodunnit" mystery. See the romance subplot of The Hollow or the short story Next To A Dog.
 * The end of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The end of Curtain (the last Hercule Poirot novel.)
 * Last page of Dead Man's Folly.
 * The end of Five Little Pigs has made some people cry every time they read it, especially since it turns out that.
 * The Daisy Armstrong murder from Murder On the Orient Express and the even more tragic fallout.
 * David Eddings gets one too, in the third book of The Elenium: the death of.
 * Also during this book, the death and last words of Martel. Made sadder if one has read the Tamuli and knows that Martel was seduced into evil by his drive for supremacy rather than (initially) personal malice.
 * During the battle in book 5 of the Belgariad:  says "He couldn't swim. I tried to save him ..."
 * In the same battle when the simple-minded nameless Arend peasant boy was sitting off towards the side of the battle playing his flute
 * Also in that battle, when Brand's son  told Brand what he had done as he was dying, and Brand turned on him in disgust.
 * The end of The Malloreon gets to me. Everyone is rejoicing and happy...and the Voice of the Prophecy, who has been present in Garion's mind for ten books now (ever since the start of The Belgariad) as a kind of Mentor/ Deadpan Snarker two in one combo, returns for a few moments to give Garion a So Proud of You speech, before dissapearing forever. Sniff... Beldin and Vella's departure is also quite sad, as is Belgarath's eulogy for the last dragon.
 * Two from The Shining Ones. First, throughout the novel Sephrenia shows extreme loathing for the titular race and it is explained that she thought they were behind the murder of her family. Then it turns out to have been  He also tries to   Which ties into the second Tear Jerker- after failing to   has his minions in Eosia seek out the Styrics and   Styric gods are extremely devoted to their worshippers and they love them like family members, so seeing the normally playful Aphrael crying and declaring that  is enough to make anyone start crying.
 * Lioness Rampant, Book Four of Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet. The deaths of 'Nuff said.
 * The Wham Episode of Lady Knight when Kel realizes that.
 * The scene in Shatterglass where Tris comforts Glaki after
 * Briar's Book, just to name a few.
 * There's a line in that book that's easily missed, but hits hard if you've become familiar with Lark and Rosethorn and their relationship.

""Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows
 * Trickster's Queen had a few. First the deaths of  and Aly's reaction to that. They and the other victims were likely about five, at the oldest. Then in the final battle,   dies while looking up at Dove, getting to see the dreams he had for his people come true - though he already knows he won't make it. "See our future? See how we can be great?" Dear God... Also Nawat not wanting to cry over   until she was already in the afterlife, because she would get angry at him for that.
 * My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult.
 * The reason for Jesse's behaviour: no matter what he did, he always felt that he wasn't good enough because his body couldn't save Kate.
 * It's very hard to pick something out of the relentless emotional kidney-punch that is The Time-Traveler's Wife. Henry's status as Cosmic Plaything for one. The awful, awful Foregone Conclusion for another.
 * The funeral program at the conclusion of The Salmon Of Doubt
 * The end of So Long And Thanks For All The Fish: Bawwww....
 * "From then on he could play it whenever he wanted, think about what he'd missed, and live, miserably, ever after." * Sniff*
 * Speaking of Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See is a cover to cover example of this trope. And it's nonfiction.
 * Les Misérables. "The night was starless and very dark. Without any doubt, in the gloom, some mighty angel was standing with outstretched wings, waiting for the soul."
 * The whole chapter. Also, Chapter 1 of Book 7 of Volume 5 is heartrending. Constant bawling from 'The Sleepless Night' all the way through to the end.
 * Gavroche. The last two chapters of the book. Darn you, Victor Hugo!
 * Cosette was perfectly happy being raised by Jean Valjean, but in a way that almost makes it worse, considering everything Fantine did for her...
 * When Marius, just seconds after finally reconciling with his grandfather, Gillenormand, after a feud that lasted for years, storms out after Gillenormand inadvertently insults Cosette. M. Gillenormand, in his eighties, sits frozen in shock and despair before flinging himself at the open window, yelling for Marius to come back because this time he knows he won't return.
 * The last few paragraphs of All Quiet On the Western Front. Even though you kind of saw it coming. Or about half the book.
 * Kat's death. "You are not related, are you?" No, we are not related. No, we are not related. Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more."
 * Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes: The book is the story of a girl named Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima during the time of American's bombing of the cities and developed leukaemia from the radiation of the atomic bombs, who spends her time in a nursing home attempting to make a thousand origami cranes, which supposedly would grant her the ability to make one wish, which is to live. The entire book is a tear-jerker, especially the ending, in which . Think that's bad? Well, guess what?
 * Oh God.
 * to this day, Japanese schoolchildren make cranes for Sadako. She's well over her thousand now...too late.
 * I shall write peace on your wings. And you shall fly all over the world.
 * Louisa May Alcott could be really good at these:
 * in Little Women
 * Jo's poem.
 * in Little Women
 * Jo's poem.

Break like ripples on the strand

Of the deep and solemn river

Where her willing feet now stand.""

""Hints of a woman early old;
 * The stanza dedicated to in "In the Garret" is no better, either, but Jo's...

A woman in a lonely home,

Hearing, like a sad refrain-

'Be worthy love, and love will come,'

In the falling summer rain.""

""To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door
 * Dan's  and John Brooke's   in Little Men.
 * More for Dan,  in the end of Jo's Boys.
 * Jane "Jill" Pecq learning that she may end up crippled right after taking a bad fall from her sled and Molly Lou Bemis's one-chapter conversation with her father, in Jack and Jill.
 * The first one is made even worse when
 * Uncle Alec Campbell telling his ward and niece Rose about her Disappeared Dad George and The Promise he made to him on George's deathbed (taking care of her as if she was his own child) in Eight Cousins.
 * And  in the sequel, Rose in Bloom.
 * Walt Whitman's Song Of Myself LII, especially at the line "Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you." As well as this:

Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed

Let the physician and priest go home

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will

O despairer, here is my neck

By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.''"


 * Though there have been many deaths throughout the series, the death of in Temeraire was particularly heartbreaking.


 * And shortly after, Laurence wraps it up with this jewel of a line:

"Regan: Paulie! Paulie! Why? What will I tell our mother? What am I going to say to her?"
 * There are many in the Witcher Cycle by Andrzej Sapkowski, it being a dying fantasy world far on the cynical side of the scale
 * The very Bittersweet Ending.
 * The scene in the "Blood of Elves" where, after a bloody melee between elves and humans with dwarves fighting on both sides and several sympathetic pro-human dwarven characters die, it turns out that  It sets the tone for the ever darker turns of events that follow after. That scene, one of the other dwarves kneeling by his dead brother:

""Death, it was all death, there was no escape fro it. Destruction was very near, the death to end all the deaths, unless something was done.""
 * Cecilia Ahern's If You Could See Me Now, the parts told from Ivan's point of view.
 * Monster, by Frank Peretti. The whole premise of the book is somewhat heartbreaking, but the ending is so bittersweet it burns.
 * While we're on the subject of Frank Peretti, the ending of Hangman's Curse and every single chapter of the auto-biographical No More Victims-both featuring anti-bullying themes.
 * The sequel to Hangman's Curse, Nightmare academy, has some absolutely heartwrenching scenes dealing with the twins seperation from their parents and everything else they know, the parents' search for the kidnapped twins, and It can be especially bad if the reader has lost someone very close to him or her.
 * Peretti is pretty good at these. The Cooper Kids series had some good ones.
 * Where the Red Fern Grows has many tear-jerking moments, even before the end. If only all dogs were like that... Especially the part where
 * Of Mice and Men isn't an emotional story for most of the way through, but the end will shoot you in the head if you aren't ready for it.
 * The "Guys like us" speech. Especially "But not like us. Because--" "Because I got you an'--" "An' I got you."
 * "And I get to tend the rabbits" ;_;
 * Would you believe not one, but two TearJerkers in the same Star Trek novel? In the same chapter, no less? Diane Duane manages to pull it off in Spock's World, in the "historical" chapter featuring Surak. His My God, What Have I Done? while he watches the newscast about the invention of antimatter bombs, and his subsequent Heroic BSOD as he contemplates the death and destruction that are sure to follow are utterly heart-breaking.

""Celebration would win, was winning, had won now. Everything was one moment, and that moment was nothing but triumph and joy.""
 * Thankfully, the second Tear Jerker is from pure joy as Surak has his moment of Epiphany Therapy:

""It's better not to do it alone," Nita said."
 * Oh, God, Diane Duane.
 * And then there's A Wizard's Dilemma, which is just filled with gut punches and tearjerker moments. First  Duane has powers of outstanding Mood Whiplash utterly.
 * A Wizard Alone, as Nita struggled with her depression. Let's just say Duane is good at putting that emotion into words. But the breaking point is at the end, when she's :

"Enthrone your pasts;
 * The final chapters of that book were one big crowning moment of awesome for Nita, but that was really the icing on the cake. Icing made of tears! (okay, that sounded gross, but still...)
 * Also, the end of The Wounded Sky. There's a Heroic Sacrifice, some Rewriting Reality, the crew of the Enterprise being rocking friends like there's no tomorrow, and the birth of a new universe. Go. And. Read. It.
 * Now. God. The scene where, is one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in existence. And the depiction of the crew's inner selves, particularly her description of McCoy as "blazing with compassion", will make you believe in the good of humanity again. Actually, that whole book will. Chalk about a hundred billion up for Diane.
 * From "The Romulan Way", S'task chooses to go against his teacher Surak's beliefs and leave Vulcan to found the Romulan Empire. As his fleet of generation ships leaves Vulcan forever, S'task sends Surak a verse of poetry:

This done, fire and old blood

Will find you again:

Better hearts' breaking

Than worlds'."

"Dethrone the past;
 * Years later, after Surak dies, they find this verse of poetry among his writings:

This done, day comes up new

Though empty-hearted:

O the long silence,

O my son!"


 * Matthew Reilly's Scarecrow has a nasty one, where the antagonist  Shane, the main character, recognises this as being a reference to
 * Later, Shane
 * The end of Joe Abercrombieâ€™s Before They Are Hanged, specifically the Dogmanâ€™s final words at grave. â€œBack to the mud, old man. Fare you well.â€�
 * Jane Langton's The Fledgeling really ought to be a perfect storm of Narm (it involves a Waif Prophet little girl who might be the reincarnation of Henry David Thoreau, a not-subtle Green Aesop, and a character referred to as the Goose Prince for crying out loud) and yet it's a tear jerker.
 * SM Stirlings Emberverse series features the death of 90% of the human race, without jerking many tears. But the death of  at the end of the third book is another matter.
 * The final chapter of Lois Lowry's Number The Stars.
 * "All of Denmark is his bodyguard."
 * Also, the end of ‘’Messenger,’’ by the same author. Ahh, Matty ...
 * The end of the chapter in I Am Legend where Neville finds the dog. After spending a month trying to get the last living creature on earth other than himself to allow Neville to pet him, it finally looks like he will have a companion. It'll be easier just to read it yourself:

"Man hands on misery to man
 * Now try watching that bit in the movie version, with Will Smith holding the dog (who was his constant companion in this one) in a cross between a hug and a choke hold until it finally dies.
 * Lord of the Flies when it took, the only two likable characters, and killed them off brutally.
 * A Series of Unfortunate Events. The series has a dark, yet humorous tone to it, but it also really earns the name.
 * In The End when  is trapped on the makeshift raft, in labor, and the series' long-running villain, Count Olaf,   Then, with a bit of darkly humorous poetry, he gives one final "HA!" and   and the author gives a beautiful speech about the moral ambiguities of life and ends the story on the usual mysterious note. Then, comes the epilogue chapter, where the Baudelaires are preparing to leave the island for good after one year. They constructed a boat, and named the boat, like the baby, after their late mother,  For background, all the book have been
 * The painful stanza from "This be the verse" by Philip Larkin:

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can

and don't have any kids yourself."

"Nighteyes: Before you kill him, think of what you take from him. Remember what it is to be alive."
 * Then when the Baudelaires visit  and sit there silently, beyond words.
 * The fact that the boat that they left the island on was named Beatrice is especially important if you read The Beatrice Letters, a companion to the series. There are punch-out letters which are supposed to give a message to the reader once they've been unscrambled. The message:  Tears ensued. Still, the books occasionally mention what.
 * The "denouement" of The Penultimate Peril - and indeed of the whole series really - is utterly devastating. The court case turns out  The Baudelaires have no choice but to . And then Sunny suggests that, it will aid their escape  We don't really know, but it is implied that this
 * At the end of The Grim Grotto, when Fiona.
 * Robin Hobb's Fitz Chivalry books have many, many scenes.
 * The part where Fitz ? He truly terrifies the Fool, and Nighteyes is the only one able to stop him:

"Ender: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think itâ€™s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them...I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they donâ€™t exist."
 * The scene where  And
 * The first trilogy. When Fitz learns, at the end of the third book,  Heartbreaking.
 * Fitz's reaction to the death of King Shrewd. He wasn't exactly young, but then he went and got ill. Even though he made his bastard grandson an assassin, he did what he could to provide for him and loved him in his own way.
 * Then we find out about Chade's mistake.
 * The latter parts of Catch-22. A story that had been lighthearted and bizarre, and the second-to-last chapter
 * Also,
 * The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Anyone who's read it know's what scene is going to be mentioned. When
 * The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth tells the story of a Japanese artist commissioned to paint a portrait of the Buddha's funeral procession, and ultimately defies convention by including an image of his beloved pet cat, Good Fortune, among the animals.
 * A similarly moving story is Tomie DePaola's The Clown of God, a retelling of an old legend. A talented, traveling juggler is taken for granted as he ages. He chooses to give up his act when he fails his signature routine (7 balls, including a golden one) and is cruelly mocked and run out of town by a mob. Christmas Eve comes and he seeks shelter in a church. He witnesses visitors leaving little gifts at the feet of a statue of the Madonna and her Child. Once everyone has left he notices how stern the Child looks, even with all the gifts, so he decides to perform his entire act for him, full costume and all. (sniff) The Weston Woods animated version handles this particularly well.
 * The R.O. Blechman version, narrated by Boris Karloff. ''And in fifty years he would be dead and turn into dust... and blow across fields and nourish cowslips, and blow into people's eyes."
 * At the end of the first book of the Stravaganza series, City of Masks,  There's also a very sad moment towards the middle of the book, when   Even the beginning when it first reveals Lucien's illness is pretty emotional, especially with people who have gone through or know people who have gone through cancer.
 * Ender's Game: "The most noble title any child can bear is third", " ", " ", "Do they know me well enough to know I don't fear death?"

""Children, Sister Carlotta, the things I did to these children." "You gave them a world to come home to." "All but one of them""
 * And in Ender's Shadow, when Bean, alone among Ender's jeesh, realizes : "O my son Absalom. My son, my son Absalom. Would God I could die for thee, O Absalom, my son. My sons!"
 * Also in Ender's Shadow, at the very end, when Bean finally gets to meet his parents, and his mother, who has just become aware of his existence around 10 seconds ago, opens her arms wide and shouts "Here are my sons, back from the war! I'm so proud of both of you!" or something to that effect. This causes even Bean to burst into tears; this is the kid who showed barely any emotion through the entire book.
 * And shortly before that, in the dialogue between Graff and Sister Carlotta at the start of the last chapter when Carlotta tries telling Graff how he saved the world and Graff responds except for Ender.

"And I say to Sam now: "Samâ€”here's the book.: It's so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
 * At the end of Shadow of the Giant, Bean says goodbye in a letter to his wife, Petra, knowing he'll never see her again. The saddest part though, is that their friend Peter has been reading the letter to her, but when she reads it, she realizes Peter added  to the end.
 * Children of the Mind, near the end when  Peter is watching Si Wang-Mu on the beach on the Samoan planet. It went something like "Because it's enough for me that when I touched your shoulder you leaned on me, and when you felt me slipping away, you called my name." That and the preceding paragraph.
 * The Velveteen Rabbit.
 * Seconded. The part when the boy is forced to have all of his toys burned because of that pesky scarlet fever... and then the rabbit becomes real and... * Sniff* 
 * The Mists of Avalon. The whole book. But especially the end, where . Also, when
 * The death of  and
 * In Drums of Autumn, the split second in the prison with Bree and Stephen Bonnet where it looks like
 * In A Breath of Snow and Ashes, just before
 * Any novel by Kurt Vonnegut makes the reader want to jump out of the window in despair somewhere along the way.
 * Just Kurt Vonnegut in general; anything connected to him automatically becomes either a Reverse Funny Aneurysm or just plain sad. An article about him after his death said he tended to apologise profusely to Japanese people for Hiroshima and Nagasaki... aaaaand, here come the waterworks again...
 * The scene in Slaughterhouse Five where the main character watches a video of a city being bombed in reverse.
 * The part of the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five where Vonnegut is writing in his own voice:

And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like 'Poo-tee-weet?'"

I have told my sons not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee."

"[[spoiler:''"Rachel!" It was Tobias.
 * Also from Slaughterhouse Five is the scene where the English colonel in a POW camp says that he has seen nothing beautiful for five years.
 * In Bluebeard,
 * The Little Prince: The whole thing with the prince and the fox ("what's essential is invisible to the eye"), when, and the very ending when
 * The scene where
 * The novel becomes a bit of a Tear Jerker when you remember that Antoine Saint-Exupery, the author, really was a pilot...and his plane went down and they never found the body.
 * The ending of Seven Little Australians tugs at the heartstrings with the death of . * sniff*
 * Morris Gleitzman's Water Wings. There's a girl who's grandmother loved swimming. Near the end, . * SOB!*
 * Becky Bananas This Is Your Life. It's sad enough with the main character being a Littlest Cancer Patient, but when you read the very last page ...well, if you don't cry, you have no heart.
 * The ending of Charlotte's Web.
 * deaths in Brian Jacques' Loamhedge, and  death in Taggerung. For the first two, it was not only the fact that they sacrificed themselves to fight scores of vermin so their friends could get away, and died paw in paw, but also their last lines:  . As for , it was that she died peacefully during the feast while her cheery song was played, and   "Into the setting sun, over the hills and far away"
 * Hazel's epilogue at the end of Watership Down.
 * The final line.
 * The final book in the Animorphs series. The funeral scene where.
 * The Rachel's final battle was a tear jerker, especially
 * The Rachel's final battle was a tear jerker, especially

 I pleaded.

"I can't. I..."

He didn't understand. 

"Okay. Okay. Your left paw, towards your face. Has to be fast."



"Now!"

I stabbed my paw towards my face. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him struggle, like a worm on a fishhook. A snake impaled on my claws. Tom.

 Tom cried in outrage.

 I said vaguely.

 The Yeerk screamed with Tom's mouth.

I bit down on the snake.'']]"

"With his shoes in his hand but without his soul, he moved silently down the rear stairs and was gone, his eyes as dry as a burning leaf."
 * For that matter, the first book in the author's next series, Remnants. In the first half of the book, we're told that To drive the point in, the main character Jobs, who is trying to get tickets on a ship off the doomed planet for his parents, himself, and his girlfriend, is treated to  And there were thirteen books'' of this series.
 * death in Anne of Green Gables.
 * Emily of New Moon when That description doesn't sound especially tear-jerkish, but there's a quote from Emily:  . Also in Rilla of Ingleside, when  Just the words "And So, Goodnight".
 * Ink & Steel starts punching one in the tear ducts at about the point of, and never really stops.
 * Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" It's so eerie, too...
 * The poem alone.
 * Bradbury is very good at tearjerkers. There's a reason "The Rocket Man" inspired such a mournful song. Most points involving Mildred, in Fahrenheit 451.
 * "All Summer in a Day"
 * "The Exiles".
 * To Kill a Mockingbird.
 * So it wasn't just me, then?
 * The books were banned because of racism... people obviously missing the whole point while reading the story. The whole book was so heartwrenching.
 * . So much said in just two words.
 * Just think about  and start weeping.
 * Also "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your father is passing."
 * Maybe it was just me, but  always gets me teary eyed. There's just something so beautiful about that moment.
 * The Catcher in The Rye. Many of the Holden and Phoebe scenes, and her on the carousel.
 * F. X. Toole's short story, "Million Dollar Baby", especially the last line.

"TO my true king I offer'd free from stain
 * Anyone who's read a James Herriot book will know that tearjerker stories are spaced throughout, with material such as a young dog being put to sleep because she had uncurable mange and an old bed-ridden woman trying to take care of her animals. Even the happy ones can cause rivers of tears, with "Mrs. Donovan" (the story itself is on page 57).
 * "Have a cigar."
 * Macaulay's Epitaph on a Jacobite. So sad it deserves to be printed in full.

Courage and faith: vain faith, and courage vain.

For him, I threw lands, honors, wealth, away,

And one dear hope, that was more priz'd than they.

For him I languish'd in a foreign clime,

Gray-hair'd with sorrow in my manhood's prime;

Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,

And pin'd by Arno for my lovelier Tees;

Beheld each night my home in fever'd sleep,

Each morning started from the dream to weep;

Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave

The resting place I ask'd, an early grave.

Oh thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone

From that proud country which was once mine own,

By those white cliffs I never more must see,

By that dear language which I spake like thee,

Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear

O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here."

"''In Flanders fields the poppies blow
 * So does In Flanders Fields.

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

'''We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.'''

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.''"

"What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
 * Likewise, anything by Wilfred Owen, particularly "Anthem for Doomed Youth".

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds."

"Have you forgotten yet?...
 * While we're on the subject of First World War poetry, "Aftermath" by Siegfried Sassoon.

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--

The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench

Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--

And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then

As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back

With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey

Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget."

"Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
 * Also by Sassoon, "The Dugout"

And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,

Exhausted face?

It hurts my heart to watch you,

Deep-shadow'd by the candle's guttering gold.

And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder.

Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head.

You are too young to fall asleep forever,

And when you sleep, you remind me of the dead."

"Had I the heavensâ€™ embroidered cloths,
 * The poem "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by William Butler Yeats, especially considering that Aedh is a Yeats characte described as pale, lovelorn, and lonely.

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

""But you said it was your father. Burrom was female?"
 * Johnno by David Malouf has one toward the end. Throughout the book, we see Johnno as a drunken, dangerous fool constantly holding the far more sensible and rational Dante back. Then, after, Dante finds a letter from Johnno that makes it clear that Johnno is a loyal and devoted friend who has been repeatedly let down, betrayed and ignored by the aloof Dante. What makes it even more heartbreaking is that it's generally believed to be semi-autobiographical, with Dante being Malouf.
 * Bridge to Terabithia. The movie was ten times worse.
 * "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning--... So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
 * The death of  in Inkspell.   Come to think of it,  death in itself was a Tear Jerker.
 * The World According To Garp. The whole thing.
 * Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl was either full of this or Narm, depending on where you fall on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. Particularly the ending.
 * The sequel was just as heartwrenching.
 * In Out of the Silent Planet,.
 * House of Leaves more sad than scary.
 * When
 * When, ** Pelafina's letters.
 * The fact that.
 * The Pekinese.
 * Delial.
 * Happy tears, though, when.
 * When
 * "My Dog Skip". The scene with the kitten.
 * death in Firestarter.
 * Speaking of King:  death in Duma Key.
 * The backstory to The Running Man.
 * death towards the end of The Long Walk
 * 's reaction. And this after he said to himself that . He might not have any tears left to cry, but we sure do.
 * Completely understandable, The line that's the worst is  screaming, in tears, "I DID IT WRONG!"
 * After in Under the Dome.  And then,  Things Got Worse.
 * Paradise Lost. There are two particular parts that make me want to cry: the speech that Lucifer makes before he first goes into the Garden, and Michael showing Adam the consequences of the Fall, and the war and death that it's going to cause for Adam's descendants. In both of them, it's the horrible inevitability of it all.
 * "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." - Brokeback Mountain.
 * The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis.
 * On the subject of CS Lewis, the ending of The Last Battle.
 * The Backstory behind King Caspian's loss of his wife (killed by ) and son (abducted,  ) in The Silver Chair.
 * "I loved them. And you gave them to me."
 * Generation Kill.
 * In Mariel of Redwall, the title character's account of what she suffered from the Big Bad. Especially in the audio book.
 * The deaths of a lot of the Mook vermin. Some of 'em didn't even do anything, but they're the epitome of Ugly Cute.
 * And the orphans in The Bellmaker. They've been trapped on an island with a hedgehog named Burrom caring for them, but she died. Benjy, the oldest, leaves the body in the tent and tells Wincey and Figgs, the two little girls, that Burrom is sleeping.
 * Generation Kill.
 * In Mariel of Redwall, the title character's account of what she suffered from the Big Bad. Especially in the audio book.
 * The deaths of a lot of the Mook vermin. Some of 'em didn't even do anything, but they're the epitome of Ugly Cute.
 * And the orphans in The Bellmaker. They've been trapped on an island with a hedgehog named Burrom caring for them, but she died. Benjy, the oldest, leaves the body in the tent and tells Wincey and Figgs, the two little girls, that Burrom is sleeping.

"That was Wincey's idea. She never knew her father, so she thought it would be nice to call Burrom father.""

"Wherever you are, wherever God takes you, fly high. I'll guard the Phoenix for you, I promise. Goodbye. I love you."
 * The death of  in Bridge of Birds, in his delirium of pain, he
 * Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey collaborated on a book called The Ship Who Searched in the "Ship Who Sang" 'verse. In it early on, a little girl is slowly paralyzed from the neck down. When she knows people are watching her she's a Cheerful Child, but when she thinks she's alone, particularly after her parents are gone... "I wanted - Teddy, I wanted to see the stars!"
 * On the subject of Mercedes Lackey, at the end of Arrow's Fall. Brightly Burning has several moments.
 * The 2nd half of Arrow's Fall, especially  Might as well mention  in the first half of the book, especially in light of what happens later on.
 * The Last Herald Mage Trilogy. The 2nd half of Magic's Pawn. The treatment of Vanyel by his father and Jarvis at the very beginning.
 * in Storm Warning and Altra's reaction to  at the end of Storm Breaking.
 * The very end of The Incredible Journey, when the three animals all end their journey together.
 * Before I Die. Especially the last few pages.
 * The "Instructions for..." sections. Loudly. Especially the . Dear god.
 * Everything written by Douglas Coupland has multiple examples of this.
 * In The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen by M.T. Anderson, the moment Katie realizes that, as a fictional character she will never age, never go to college, never get married, and eventually becoming just as much an anachronism as her friend Jasper Dash, a Tom Swift style character, as her friend Lily leaves her behind.
 * The epilogue of Jesusland - the narrator finally finds freedom with her brother, and states that they're a true family now. The opening line of the epilogue reveals that . And this is an autobiography.
 * Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go in which
 * The whole novel is a Tear Jerker
 * " ". Upon recalling that scene now, she is crying even as she writes this.
 * By the same author, The Remains of the Day and the concluding realisation that the main character has wasted his chance of getting together with the woman he loved.
 * The final meeting between Audrey and  in the Deptford Mice books.
 * As did  and the aftermath in Goodnight Mister Tom.
 * Honor Harrington:
 * In At All Costs,
 * The end of the book, where Honor mourns the death of while reading to her children:

""The peeps won't get us, Baby. We're safe now. Mommy made it safe.""
 * A page earlier, when at the end of the battle of Manticore, where millions of people have been killed, including many of Honor's friends and colleagues and then she gets confirmation that ship has somehow survived and gets a good signal to the bridge. And then she learns that while the main bridge survived, flag bridge did not.
 * On the other side of the conflict in the same book, the death of . One of the most sympathetic Havenite officers, who's been around nearly the whole series, and who's just gone through so damn much and survived, only to die because of the resumption of a stupid war that he knows happened because of an engineered misunderstanding, and killed by All of it happening  Seeing  so broken afterward only adds to it.
 * Honor is notorious for never betraying a single emotion, but the readers get to see it all from the inside.
 * The scene in The Short Victorious war where Helen Zilwicki's convoy (carrying her husband and four-year-old daughter) is attacked, and she almost doesn't say goodbye because no one in her crew will have the chance.

"'You come at last,' she said. 'I have waited too long.'
 * In a similar vein (save no familial connection), Edward Saganami's last battle, as recounted in the prologue to The Shadow of Saganmi, under similar conditions as those faced by Captain Zilwicki.
 * The senseless slaughter of a RMN shuttle by a mentally unbalanced crewmember of the Marianne/Golden Butterfly, in The Shadow of Saganami.
 * , too. Mr. Weber is a cruel man.
 * The end when Hexapuma got back,, and Home fleet is waiting for them, and gives them the traditional salute to the queen's yacht.
 * death in Torch of Freedom, saving  with her lover   watching, but unable to do anything because they both had a higher responsibility and he couldn't reach her in time anyway. He has to shut the door on her as she dies to keep the toxin in the room from spreading.
 * The last few chapters of Stephen King's It.
 * The moment in Stephen King's The Shining where.
 * and its immediate aftermath, halfway through John Green's Looking For Alaska
 * Miles's essay at the end jerked a few tears as well.
 * The scene in Lian Hearn's Heaven's Net Is Wide, in which Shigeru and Naomi fantasize about what life would be like if the were "normal" people. It doesn't help that, if you've read the main series (of which Heaven's Net is a prequel) you know that they don't get the happy ending they deserve:.
 * The final scene of Robert Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls:
 * You should probably read To Sail Beyond The Sunset. Not that it was very good.
 * "The Outsiders" - when
 * Apparently
 * There's also the companion book “That was Then, This is Now”; the narrator mentions Ponyboy just once, casually remarking that some bad things happened to him. Oh, and M&M.
 * Barbara Park's Mick Harte Was Here. All of it.
 * The major situation in The Cold Equations. Even if it is the result of plotholes you could drive a truck through.
 * Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind has this several times, most strongly when and in the epilogue, when the line  takes on a full meaning. It doesn't help that the epilogue and the prologue are nearly identical; re-reads will also drive that point home.
 * and
 * Terhune's Bruce has this in the second to last chapter. Poor
 * The 'Rai-Kirah' series by Carol Berg - Transformation, Revelation, and Restoration - has this frequently in the first book. Especially when and when the young Ezzarian.
 * Similarly, in the 3rd book: watching Seyonne . You know it's bad when having your protagonist  is a happy ending.
 * In Mary Stewart's Merlin books, there's a passage about Uther's sudden death at a feast and the ensuing furore over the succession, and there's one paragraph. The dead king is sitting in his chair going stiff and cold, "with no man looking his way, save only Ulfin [his most loyal servant], who was weeping."
 * The Last Unicorn, when Molly meets the unicorn and breaks down. And the end, when Schmendrick tells Prince Lir, "She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Of all unicorns, she is the only one who knows what regret is... and love."
 * Of Mommy Fortuna's illusions, the most convincing is the spider web that looks to have the whole starry sky trapped in it. The reason it's so convincing is that the spider believes it herself. When Fortuna is killed and the illusions are dispelled, all the other animals run off, and the only remaining sign of life is "the small, dry sound of a spider weeping."
 * The dog in the cage dreaming of "a hand scratching the lonely place behind its ears."
 * Molly's line at the end:
 * Isabel Allende's "The Judge's Wife", when Nicolas meets the woman he's destined to lose his head over.
 * And also, in "Eva Luna", when  And Melecio  's terrible backstory too. Poor, poor Melecio.
 * The Paul Street Boys: death.
 * Real life example: Bill Bryson's A Short History Of Nearly Everything ends with the chapter "Gone", detailing exactly how many species we have made extinct. After the Science Is Fun angle of the entire book, it's gut-wrenching.
 * So many in the Silmarillion, being as it is a crushing history of all the tragedies and triumphs of Middle-Earth's Elder Days, but the biggest example has to be the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, "for no song or tale can contain all its grief." This ultimate Hope Spot sees the combined armies of the Elves, righteous Men, and Dwarves gather in their height of grandeur...and, thanks to a few traitors among some Men, are utterly crushed beyond all hope of recovery. Hero after hero falls, and entire kingdoms' menfolk are wiped out. At the last, Hurin of the House of Hador stands alone before the victrious armies of darkness, and goes down like the Tragic Hero he is, bellowing his defiant cry of "Day shall come again!" every time he kills an enemy, until the severed hands pull him down and he is dragged chained to Morgoth's court with mockery.
 * The ending of the Akallabêth
 * The two moments in The Silmarillion when  and the reunion of Húrin and Morwen:

'It was a dark road. I have come as I could,' he answered.

'But you are too late,' said Morwen. 'They are lost.'

'I know it,' he said. 'But you are not.'

But Morwen said: 'Almost. I am spent I shall go with the sun. Now little time is left: if you know, tell me! How did she find him?'

But Húrin did not answer, and they sat beside the stone, and did not speak again; and when the sun went down Morwen sighed and clasped his hand, and was still; and Húrin knew that she had died. He looked down at her in the twilight and it seemed to him that the lines of grief and cruel hardship were smoothed away. 'She was not conquered,' he said; and sat unmoving beside her as the night drew down."

"If any question why we died
 * The chapter "Of Beren and Luthien" and the follow-up to it. You know what's going to happen from the beginning, but it still hits hard.
 * 's suicide near the end of the Broken Sky series, with a short monologue beforehand about how although he didn't live with honor, he could at least die with it.
 * The end of the Thursday Next book Something Rotten:
 * And then there's the next book:
 * In Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls, Ista and Arhys trading rescues in the courtyard.
 * Stephen King, for all that he writes horror, has great command of the tragic as well. To begin with, The Green Mile. The final book of his Magnum Opus, The Dark Tower, is the other truly powerful one. The death of  was absolutely heartwrenching. Oy's behavior made it even sadder. Then, near the very end,  Tearjerker personified.
 * Earlier in The Dark Tower, there's Susan's death. You know from the beginning that she's going to die, and it still heartbreaking.
 * And in The Stand, Glen Bateman's death. "It's all right, Mr. Henreid. You don't know any better."
 * "Harold Jumped." No matter what a freak Harold was, that moment was 100% tear jerker.
 * 2 deaths in King's books:
 * Mentioned elsewhere, but in The Stand, It was sad in it's own right, but the worst part? He was the only 'main' main character that died in that instance.
 * In Cell, . Not only was the character likable, but the death came when
 * in Pet Sematary.
 * Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs of the War.
 * Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs of the War.

Tell them, because our fathers lied."

"I could not dig, I dared not rob
 * He wrote those lines after his son died in WWI. Jack was only found fit for service because Kipling pulled strings to get his boy into the war.
 * And

Therefore I lied to please the mob

Now all my lies are proved untrue

And I must face the men I slew."

"We have served our day."
 * The tear jerker? These are the words of a politician, not a soldier.
 * The one written for journalists killed in the war:

"Call me not false, beloved,
 * The Bridegroom. Oh, gosh.

If, from thy scarce-known breast

So little time removed,

In other arms I rest."

"Though I've belted you and flayed you,
 * The slightly narm-ish yet completely heartwrenching The Last of the Light Brigade. Or one of his most famous, Gunga Din:

By the living Gawd who made you,

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

"Malcolm: Everything... looks different... on the other side. When... shifts... paradigm...
 * Or "The Return of the Children?"
 * The penultimate chapter of You Only Live Twice. It is told in such a way that you could seriously believe this was it for Bond, and it's enough to get to a reader who wasn't even that fond of the man. An unexpectedly humorous invocation of doesn't hurt, either.
 * Libba Bray's The Sweet Far Thing. ... and then the last paragraph in itself.
 * For Felicity and Pippa's deal: "She was gone for sometime. You were the only force that kept her from turning completely. That's magic. Perhaps the most powerful I've seen."
 * Just being reminded of
 * "Our days are all numbered in the book of days, Most High. That is what gives them sweetness and purpose." Said to Gemma as she's reflecting on everyone she's just lost.
 * Stone Fox has its most tearjerking and heartwarming moment when
 * The Scholar's Tale from Hyperion.
 * Every tale in Hyperion.
 * The end of The Rise of Endymion is a tear-jerker in a good way, though.
 * The Scholar's Tale
 * The Book Thief. The ending. You'd think the fact that the narrator tells you what's going to happen very early on would alleviate this, but nope.
 * "I am haunted by humans."
 * The Book Thief is one of those rare books that will devastate you emotionally, then, at the end, make you say, "Thank you, sir, may I have another six books like this please?"
 * When  And when
 * When
 * Good God. That's all that can be said. This trope could be named Book Thief Moments. Especially for those whose countries were on the Allied side, and you realize - these are the enemy. The regular German citizens, Rudy and Liesel and the Vandenburgs? German. The bombings? If we were in a history classroom, those would be the victories. The best and worst of them was  When you've been watching the two of them and waiting for this moment for almost the whole book, and you've been warned that this is the form it's going to take - over and over again you've been warned - it just... there are no words except the ones that make the scene.
 * The scene where
 * Death's narration. Just...the sheer heartwrenching beauty of it.
 * A couple more: First, Death saying that the poor keep moving, never realizing that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting no matter where they go. Second, Death's weariness with the world and inability to get away from it even for a short while. Is it normal for me to want to hug The Grim Reaper?
 * The 10th part of the book.
 * Sherlock Holmes's letter in The Final Problem. Hearing it read out loud is even worse.
 * Also, the part where Watson is shouting for Holmes and looking all around not knowing.
 * In the same set of events during The Empty House: when Holmes wants to call out to Watson but can't for more pragmatic reasons.
 * Likewise, the ending of The Cardboard Box.
 * Study in Scarlet might be really flawed, but the scene where Jefferson Hope goes hunt for food during his and the Ferriers' escape from Salt Lake City, and discovers that It Got Worse as soon as he left (with John being shot to death by Stangerson and Lucy being brought back and forced to marry Drebber)
 * In Harry Turtledove's Alternate History novel The Guns of the South, there is a truly tragic scene where Lincoln addresses the victorious Confederate army. If seeing Honest Abe's entire life come crashing down before his very eyes isn't sad, nothing is.
 * In Snow Crash, when Y.T. learns how the Rat Things are made, and tells about the dog she and her boyfriend had taken care of until it was stolen from her home. Immediately afterward, a brief scene is shown where Y.T.'s dog, now named Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit B-782, is sitting in a virtual reality simulation of the equivalent of dog heaven, thinking about the girl who used to own him, and how much he still loves her.
 * Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville. Sure, it's aimed at children, but so are Don Bluth movies.
 * The ending was one of the most bittersweet things ever. "If you love her, you have to let her go!".
 * Thirded. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher was the first book I've ever cried over and to date remains the only one. The situation - parting with a pet or friend, isn't particularly unique, and it's not written in an astoundingly beautiful way, but it just feels so right.
 * Speaking of Coville- Dark Whispers when Finder confessed his love for Belle- and promptly dies." i always thought... you were beautiful" what makes it sadder is that one, he died for no reason, and two, she DOESN'T love him back. SOB
 * T'zikin's death in Kingdoms and Conquerers. after almost dying a dozen times, she gets shot with an arrow saving Megan's life. she dies in her Loves arms, as he begs her not to leave him. " let me go, Ryan... let me go." just THINKING about it makes me break down in tears
 * The ending of Jacob Have I Loved. Absolutely heartwarming in a bittersweet way.
 * The ending of Marley and Me. You know it's the only way this true story can end, but that doesn't help at all as Marley gets sicker and sicker and finally gets put to sleep. Then it just keeps going, as John Grogan recalls writing a special column about Marley after sufficient time to grieve, determined to portray him exactly as badly behaved as he was. The result was an unprecedented number of e-mails and phone messages that quickly overwhelmed his servers both from people offering condolences, and challenging his statement that Marley was the worst dog in the world because their own dog was. All these people went on to form their own community out of it.
 * Ian Malcolm's smiling, morphine-looped "dying" words in Jurassic Park, after chapter upon chapter of being an Insufferable Genius Cassandra Truth:
 * Ian Malcolm's smiling, morphine-looped "dying" words in Jurassic Park, after chapter upon chapter of being an Insufferable Genius Cassandra Truth:

Harding: Paradigm?

Malcolm: No. Not... paradigm... beyond...

Harding: Beyond paradigm?

Malcolm: Don't care about... what... anymore...

Harding: What don't you care about?

Malcolm: Anything. Because... everything looks different... on the other side.

And he smiled."

"Bartimaeus: It's two thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine years since Ptolemy died. He was fourteen. Eight world empires have risen up and fallen away since that day, and I still carry his face. Who do you think's the lucky one?"
 * Esther Friesner has a collection of stories entitled Death and the Librarian, of which about half is purest Tear Jerker. The title story, about a librarian who reads to the ghosts of children, but something in the book will make you cry.
 * The deaths of  at the end of Abhorsen. The epilogue helps a little, but still...
 * And what about the ending of Sabriel?
 * The end of the Bartimaeus trilogy. It doesn't help that Bartimaeus's closing lines are so... ambiguous, but not. Or that Jonathan Stroud delays the realization for, what, a chapter? And the moment between him and Kitty
 * Also, this part, when suddenly the sarcastic djinn becomes the Sad Clown

"L:... Naomi Misora, I cannot overlook evil. I cannot forgive it. It does not matter if I know the person who commits evil or not. I am only interested in justice.
 * A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini of Kite Runner fame. The latter is tear-inducing too, but Suns... oh boy.
 * Mariam's story.
 * While we're on the subject of Kite Runner,
 * The Death Note tie-in novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases has an exchange between Agent Misora and L that is equal parts Tear Jerker and Badass Creed:
 * The Death Note tie-in novel Another Note: The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases has an exchange between Agent Misora and L that is equal parts Tear Jerker and Badass Creed:

Misora: Only... in justice...? Then... nothing else matters?

L: I wouldn't say that, but it is not a priority.

M: You won't forgive any evil, no matter what the evil is?

L: I wouldn't say that, but it is not a priority.

M: But... there are people who justice cannot save. And there are people who evil can save.

L: There are. But even so.

M: ...

L: Justice has more power than anything else.

M: Power? By power... do you mean 'strength'?

L: No. I mean kindness."

"I cannot let you go, so easily as that! While she was still quite near I took a step into the sunshine, and looked about me. Upon the grass beside the tent there was a kind of wreath or bower - part of some display that had come loose and been discarded. There were roses on it; I bent and plucked one, and called to a boy who was standing idly by, handed the flower to him and gave him a penny, and told him what I wanted. Then I moved back into the shadows of the tent, behind the wall of sloping canvas, and watched. The boy ran up to Kitty; I saw her turn at his cry, then stoop to hear his message. He held the rose to her, and pointed back to where I stood, concealed. She turned her face towards me, then took the flower; he raced off at once to spend his coin, but she stood quite still, the rose held before her in her clasped, gloved fingers, her veiled head weaving a little as she tried to pick me out. I don't believe she saw me, but she must have guessed that I was watching, for after a minute she gave a kind of nod in my direction - the slightest, saddest, ghostliest of footlight bows. Then she turned; and soon I lost her to the crowd."
 * Oh, L.
 * The end of Gone With the Wind
 * "With God as my witness...I will never be hungry again!"
 * . Rhett's line
 * The 2nd half of Connie Willis's Doomsday Book - especially the end,
 * Say what you will about the rest of the series, but Raina's death in Temple of the Winds
 * The final scenes in This Is The Way The World Ends, with the protagonist smashing the miniature nuclear weapon against humanity's tomb stone, recalling all those who died in the nuclear holocaust (including his wife and 10-year-old daughter). The futility of the anger of the last man on Earth really hits you where it hurts.
 * This bit of Tipping the Velvet:

": Please see that they know, although the word Black may brand my name forever, my soul is . Tell them...
 * The scene in Briar's Book where dies. The scene is admittedly quite touching, considering all that she and the children she cares for have gone through, and the way that the children beg and plead with her to come back.
 * Nonfiction example: the first few pages of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States details Columbus' slaughter of the native Arawaks when he first arrived in North America. The rest of the book goes on to chronicle in the most heart wrenching fashion how the people in power in the United States have oppressed women, people of color, immigrants, the poor, people of other countries, and anybody who isn't them for the following 500+ years. It's a great book, but definitely not a happy book.
 * 1984.
 * Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.
 * The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook.
 * Terry Pratchett's Nation is constant tearjerker, especially the first third. Though Pratchett's well known penchant for satire and silliness shows through, the aftermath of the tidal wave that destroys Mau's village and the Sweet Judy is shown in devastating detail, particularly Mau's crippling grief and horror as he, all alone, is forced to drag the bodies of the men, women and children he has known all his life into the sea. Daphne seems a more comedic character, until we realise how deeply the death of her mother and baby brother (it's hinted the birth killed them both) traumatised her and her father, who she may never see again. Then there's the Unknown Woman, a survivor of the tsunami who never speaks and almost let herself and her baby starve to death, the theme of raging against the heavens in the face of tragedy, and eventually one is forced to wonder if PTerry was feeling a mite emotional when he wrote this...
 * The ending, when  And after that, when
 * Moiraine sacrificing herself to stop Lanfear in the Wheel of Time--particularly her letter afterward and Rand's reaction to it. Uno recounting the deaths of his fellow Sheinarans, who had all died off-screen. The origin of the Aiel. Lan's origin and the story of Malkier. New Spring, the final half.
 * The impromptu, secret funeral given by Alliandre, Faile, and her two devotees for their Meradin (and Maiden) protectors in The Gathering Storm was incredibly touching.
 * Perrin breaking down on Faile's shoulder after his whole family was killed by Padan Fain. A more heartwarming version of this happens later, when he encounters a young lad with the last name Aybara who thinks he "might be a cousin" and Perrin immediately accepts him as family and calls him Cousin.
 * The death of.
 * The death of.

Egwene: I will. But your soul is not. I can see it. Your soul is of a pure white...like the Light itself."

"Why do you fight?
 * The entire ending of The Gathering Storm. After becoming as hard as cuendillar, falling prey to He Who Fights Monsters and If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him, deciding nothing matters but defeating the Dark One and then dying, nearly killing his own father, and coming this close to not only being Driven to Suicide but taking the whole Pattern with him, Rand finally, finally understands what he is fighting for, why life is worth living, and learns laughter and tears again, thus healing his insanity. And idealism wins, idealism fucking wins.

Maybe it's so that we can get a second chance. Because each time we live, we get to love again. If I live again, then she might as well! I fight because last time, I failed. I fight because I want to fix what I did wrong. I want to do it right this time!"

"Rand: I'm so sorry
 * In Towers of Midnight Avienda's second vision at Rhuiden
 * Also in Towers of Midnight, Rand's reunion with hsi father at the end of the chapter.

Tam: It's all right son. It's all right.

Rand: I've done so much that is terrible.

Tam: Nobody walks a difficult path without stumbling now and again. It didn't break you when you fell. That is the important part."

""We made our choice, and, I'd like to think, we made a difference in the end. Not bad for the son of an Andamooka opal miner.
 * Pinquo by Colin Thiele. The reader is forewarned of the death of the penguin protagonist, but still...
 * Between the horrifying and the awesome World War Z provides a number of tearjerkers. Being English though the eulogy for Her Majesty Elizabeth II was particularly touching, especially as might do something like that. Far from the only example but quite a poignant one. Her own parents stayed in the path of danger during World War II, so she definitely has it in her.
 * "Tell it to the whales."
 * Hey, buddy, it's cool now. You can let go.
 * Terry Knox, the last survivor of the International Space Station.

(Terry Knox died three days after this interview)"

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived thereâ€”on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
 * The last broadcast from Buenos Aires, and the suicides of the Information Reception radio operators. All of them, one by one, in the aftermath of the war.
 * Daniel Hackworth's story about the abandoned puppies in the pet shop, and his guilt about not doing anything.
 * They could have withdrawn, blown the tunnel, sealed them in again. One squad against three hundred zombies. One squad... led by my baby brother. His voice was the last thing we heard before their radio went silent. His last words: "On ne passé pas!"
 * Being a Kill'Em All story, Battle Royale can't really avoid this. When.
 * When
 * Seconded. It's made worse by how he
 * The
 * A bit from nonfiction. This bit from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space:
 * A bit from nonfiction. This bit from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space:

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

"They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way."
 * The last paragraph of Pale Blue Dot is also a Tear Jerker, speaking about future human colonists on other worlds:

"UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
 * The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. Especially the ending:

nothing is going to get better. It's not. SO...

Catch! calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall.

It's a Truffula Seed. It's the last one of all!

You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds.

And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs.

Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care.

Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air.

Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack.

Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back."

"Charlie:Nobody can dast blame this man... He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. When you get a scuff on your hat or people stop smiling back, that's an earthquake... A salesman is got to dream, boy."
 * In James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere, Danny Upshaw being Driven to Suicide over an impending sodium pentothal session which will force him (completely inadvertently) to reveal his homosexuality. The real kicker is when he decides against doing it by sticking his gun in his mouth, given that it would make all the other cops joking about it being the perfect way for a gay man to die.
 * Agreed. One of my favorite books.
 * If you're Chilean, have read the book "Nuestras Sombras" (Our Shadows) by Maria Teresa Budge and have not cried at least a single time... you truly have no soul. Plucky Girl / The Messiah Patricia and all of her difficulties... Sniff, Patty, snifff.
 * The poem The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes.
 * In Man in The Iron Mask, although it tells of
 * The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The got to the point where the tears come, and the last line provokes even more.
 * The Sound and The Fury has this for Benjy Compson. Perhaps the worst is at the very end when Benjy starts crying about Caddy: But he bellowed slowly, abjectly, without tears; the grave hopeless sound of all voiceless misery under the sun.
 * Quentin's section is heartbreaking.
 * Death of a Salesman. You are a heartless human being if, at the least, you do not feel sorry for Willy Loman:

"Soon, soon the flesh
 * The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. The protagonist and Author Avatar, Esther Greenwood, undergoes a mental breakdown and
 * Sylvia Plath's journals can have the same effect if you get attached to her after seeing what kind of person she was. Once you read the last of her journals, you may start to cry once the realization hits you that
 * Lady Lazarus. I'll just pick the best stanzas because the entire poem would require too much space.

The grave cave ate will be

At home on me

And I am a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like a cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call."

"."
 * Narration from Septimus' mind in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. He volunteered in World War I. He watched his friend, Evans, be blown to pieces. The war destroyed his humanity and he died on the inside. He can't feel anything anymore. He suffers from hallucinations of Evans. In all likelihood, he's probably schizophrenic. Finally, Septimus ends it all by committing suicide.
 * Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, for the sense of undaunted courage wasted in senseless sacrifice. Try reading it aloud.
 * Old Yeller.
 * Frankenstein. A bit when, but mostly EVERY. SINGLE. THING. the creature says.
 * A book of diary entries written by Palestinian and Israeli children. The entries were based loosely on prompts by the people putting them together, and one of the main points that kept coming up on both sides, over and over, was: "I don't want to meet any Israeli kids my age, because they want to kill me!", "I don't want to meet any Palestinian kids my age, they'd try to shoot me!" And then a very young Israeli girl's entry was about her birthday party at MacDonald's getting cancelled because of a bomb threat, who ended her story with:


 * "Blue Fin", by Colin Thiele. The scene where.
 * New Moon. Bella loses Edward, the only thing she cared about in the world, and when she's finally found a friend in Jacob...he leaves too! Cue uncontrollable sobbing.

""I cannot fight him, Uncle. He knighted me. I will go against him if you wish, but I won't go in armor.""
 * Breaking Dawn.
 * This line:
 * Most of The short second life of Bree Tanner considering how we know it ends but the biggest has to be
 * Tim Lott's ''Fearless" iss about around 1000 girls, mostly orphans, mentally unwell or criminals, who live in what they call the Institute, which is actually called the "City Communtiy Faith School For Retraining, Opportunity and Hope. Throughout the novel, the protagonist, Little Fearless, escapes the Institute and attempts to make the real situation known, until she is caught and  It's fucking sad.
 * The climax.
 * death in The Sight, with the way it played out, and later having Kar thinking that had come back, when really it was . Then, in the next book Fell, the knife of greif is once again plunged in, when it is revealed that
 * in The Eternity Code. Just reaction to hearing   is just...
 * death in the 4th book and  death in the 5th book.
 * Not only the fact that, but the way it was written.
 * The Secret Life of Bees. When You expected her to go out the wall but  was shocking!
 * The parts that concern Lily attempting to come to terms with her mother's death and/or her relationship with T-Ray (i.e. the vast majority of the book).
 * Horatio Hornblower:
 * Ship Of The Line.
 * in Lord Hornblower.
 * The endings of Midshipman and Flying Colors. "Hotspur" too.
 * in Commodore.
 * Their Eyes Were Watching God:
 * A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, many points throughout the book
 * When Johnny dies, and when Francie angrily insists that people can be both good and bad, because... Well, it just kind of hits home.
 * When they have to open the tin-can bank (which Katie had started when she got married, at the advice of her mother, to save any extra change she ever had, towards buying a piece of land someday) to pay for Johnny's burial, and when Francie asks if she should nail the can back down in the closet to start over again, Katie says no, because they own a bit of land now.
 * The scene where Sissy, who's been desperate to have a child her whole life but who's been through ten stillbirths (one at age fifteen!) instead, gives birth to her last child, at a point in her life when she's starting to get too old to get pregnant anymore. She's so sure that this time, this time, it's finally going to turn out right that she agrees to give birth in an actual hospital, something that no woman from her neighborhood has ever done. However, the child, when it's born, isn't breathing. And then, just when she's collapsing in resignation and completely devastated... "Then Sissy heard a word that she'd never heard before. She heard the word 'oxygen.' 'Quick! Oxygen!' The doctor said. And then Sissy witnessed a miracle that transcended all the miracles of all the saints she'd ever read about. She saw a dead child turned to living white. For the first time, she heard the cry of a child that she'd borne."
 * Another sad one: the description of how when there's no food in the house and Katie can't expect any money anytime soon, she has the kids play the Arctic explorer game, where they pretend to be stranded and waiting for supplies, and when she's finally able to buy groceries she also gets a little cake and a flag to stick in it so they can celebrate reaching the North Pole. One day Francie realizes that when actual explorers suffer like that, they're doing it voluntarily so they can achieve a goal for humanity, but no "big thing" comes from the Nolans not having enough to eat. She asks her mother about it, and all Katie can tell her is, "You found the catch in it."
 * The final pages of T.H. White's The Once and Future King.
 * By all that is sweet and pure, yes.
 * "And ever Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten."
 * A great of the second third book, The Ill-Made Knight, is prime tear-jerking material as well. Doomed love indeed.
 * The opening, with Lancelot giving away his childhood over to brutally training himself for Arthur -- because he believes in the Round Table, yes, but also because he thinks there's something wrong with him that he needs to atone for. Something about a person (a child, to start with) that fundamentally incapable of being comfortable in his own skin is just heart-wrenching.
 * A great of the second third book, The Ill-Made Knight, is prime tear-jerking material as well. Doomed love indeed.
 * The opening, with Lancelot giving away his childhood over to brutally training himself for Arthur -- because he believes in the Round Table, yes, but also because he thinks there's something wrong with him that he needs to atone for. Something about a person (a child, to start with) that fundamentally incapable of being comfortable in his own skin is just heart-wrenching.


 * Also by T.H. White, Wart/Arthur and Merlin's first meeting in The Sword In The Stone. Merlin is initially confused and asks Arthur if he's sure they've never seen each other before. When Arthur confirms it, Merlin briefly tears up. It isn't explained, but the Tear Jerker comes when Fridge Brilliance kicks in: since Merlin lives backwards and remembers the future, it means that from his point of view, he and Arthur are never, ever going to see each other again.
 * The death of  in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.
 * The final sentence of A. S. Byatt's Possession turns me into a quivering wreck every time.
 * in Midnight Tides, by Steven Erikson, of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Steven Erikson is known for bringing characters back for a reason.
 * The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. The tragedy of Allie.
 * The closing paragraph of the 5th Dresden Files book, Death Masks, always makes him tear up. For 2 books, Harry's been obsessed with researching a way to save his ex-girlfriend Susan, who was half-turned into a vampire. It's gotten to the point where he's almost been evicted from his office and home in his desperation to find a cure. At the end of the book, Harry finally lets go. He takes down her picture and the engagement ring he offered her from his mantle, and instead puts up the holy blade Fidelacchius, given to him by a man who surrendered himself to torture to give Harry a chance to live. The final lines, "Maybe some things just weren't meant to go together. Things like oil and water, orange juice and toothpaste. Me and Susan. But tomorrow was another day".
 * From The Dresden Files: has been terribly injured and is on life support in the hospital. Harry and the patient's family are waiting for news, and the doctor comes to say they're bringing him in. And Harry and  have to leave the room because just their being there could mess up the equipment and kill him. Ouch.
 * Before that, when
 * What those bastard Denarians did to
 * The end of Turn Coat..
 * Just before that, after the battle on the island, when
 * Just before that, after the battle on the island, when

""See, here's the thing. Morgan was right: You can't win them all. But that doesn't mean you give up. Not ever. Morgan never said that part- he was too busy living it."
 * On top of that, Morgan admitting that
 * The final lines of Turn Coat always got me.

"I closed the door behind me, and life went on.""

""For you, little girl. ""
 * The shadow of the fallen angel Lasciel spent multiple books living in Harry's head, alternating between being a dangerous annoyance and really helpful when things get desperate. Then Harry starts treating her like her own person. He gives her a nickname and, like Ivy and Bob, it changes her. And then in White Night she shields him from a psychic attack and it burns out the parts of his brain where she lives... except for the part of her that helped him play the guitar better.
 * In Changes, Harry has been paralyzed from the waist down, and is succumbing to despair, and prays to the archangel Uriel to help him. Uriel arrives and says he can't, but then reminds him that he does have a couple of other avenues open to him to . Finally, he makes the choice he's been avoiding for years.


 * When Harry that he has to  to win the day at the end of Changes, Butcher makes clear how horrible it is for him. Pyrrhic Victory indeed.

"But maybe I shouldn't have been surprised: Even in Winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel."
 * A small but powerful moment afterward: the Leanansidhe says that she will  with all the respect and honor that Harry would wish to do himself, and gives her word that she will do so - something incredibly rare among The Fair Folk. But the hammer comes from Harry's thoughts immediately afterward.


 * James Marsters's reading of that one line at the end of chapter 48, and in the last chapter, when Harry
 * The Moorchild by Eloise Mcgraw is about a half-Folk child named Saaski, switched for a human child because she doesn't belong. Near the end, when
 * Saaski is trying to see her reflection in the stream, but the water is moving so she can't make out what she looks like. Then she gives up and her eyes change color.
 * The part of that book when it talks about her childhood, and how, due to her status as half-folk, Saaski couldn't stand iron. And her father was the town's smith -- so whenever she got near him, especially his iron belt buckle, she screamed uncontrollably. He could never get close to her, never understood her; his very presence caused her to scream in genuine fear and pain from the time she was tiny. And he loved her anyway. Just imagining what that must have done to him, how that must have felt, is painful to think about.
 * Andra, a 1971 book by Louise Lawrence. The end is INCREDIBLY depressing, to say the least.
 * Oh, God, Louise Lawrence. Just thinking about the opening section of Children of the Dust.
 * Children of Dune. Alia breaking down in tears  after she finds his one of his old medals, all while the voice of   is imploring her to disregard it and stop crying.
 * The deaths of Leto II the first and Chani, respectively. What really gets me is how Herbert kills them offscreen, and does not go narmy, thus making it all the more depressing.
 * Kit Pearson's children books, the things that finally resolve by the end of her books. The thing with their problems getting fixed is that she let's them happen in a realistic way and not a "happily ever after" sort of way. One book was A Perfect Gentle Knight. A sweet book about the fun in imagination and how too much of it can be dangerous. The eldest brother (there are six children), Sebastian Bell, had been using the stories of the Arthurian legends (most particularly Lancelot's) as escapism after their mother died. Even after things start to get better, when his girlfriend, he finally snapped and lost control of what was real and what wasn't. When his younger sister (the main character), Corrie and their father find him in the old fort they used to play in and would visit, in the middle of the night   and he utters.
 * From Pearson's book ''Awake and Dreaming," where the girl gets a good family
 * While we're on the subject of Kit Pearson: Her 'Guests of War' Trilogy. Especially 'The Lights Go on Again'.  It also makes the first book an extreme tearjerker, since upon reread you realize that Norah
 * A ghost story: the protagonist is a young recently orphaned girl sent to live with her aunt. She has a bad nightmare and wakes up crying out for her parents--then remembers that she'll never hear them answer.
 * Prydain Chronicles
 * Anytime someone dies The High King. Other than.
 * ,, and
 * When
 * Anakin's death at the end of the novelization of Return of the Jedi. And while we're talking about Star Wars books, how about Revenge of the Sith? "This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever."
 * Do you think that a story by HP Lovecraft could never be just sad and not scary? You are wrong, wrong, WRONG.
 * "The Outsider" by HP Lovecraft.
 * In the middle parts of His Majesty's Dragon we meet Levitas, a small scout-dragon who lived for whatever scraps of attention his neglectful Jerkass of a captain Rankin could be bothered to give him (as the former would not say a word against the latter neither dragon nor aviator could reprimand Rankin for anything less than physical abuse). Near the end he is wounded on a mission to discover  and left to die with no more company than a ground-crewman acting against orders. Upon discovering the last situation (it was the head of his ground crew), Laurence marched into the Officers' Club, manhandled the mildly wounded Rankin out, more-or-less dragged him to Levitas' side, and forced the man to his knees so he could speak a few wooden words of thanks under threat. Levitas dies happily, as this is more than what he has ever gotten from the man in life.
 * In Kushiel's Avatar: Most of the story that takes place in Darsanga. Just how degrading it all is and how much it's broken Phedre and Joscelin and how badly it altered their relationship.
 * The children's series Thoroughbred is chock-full of tearjerkers:
 * First there's . Then she makes friends with an old mare, who delivers a sickly little foal who they name Ashleigh's Wonder- who you spend the next thirty some odd books and roughly four years of your life invested in.
 * . Censor you, Lavinia.
 * Book #19, Cindy's Heartbreak, when Cindy's favorite horse, Storm Ransom, dies of EIA.
 * Astrid Lindgren's amazing The Brothers Lionheart could really be described as Tearjerker On Paper, but two parts in the beginning get to me especially. The first one, which especially seems to get to every parent reading it to their child, is the fourth paragraph beginning with the 10 year-old protagonist stating: "Jonatan knew that I was soon going to die". The second part is when Jonatan and says: "Don't cry Scotti, we'll meet in Nangiala." The speech given by the teacher at the funeral does not help with the tears.
 * Speaking of Astrid Lindgren: In Ronja the Robbers Daughter, Matt . The reunition of  does the same to her, as well as  death.
 * The novelization of Star Trek II features, during, a very simple line about Kirk seeing McCoy crying. That little description, with all the history behind the characters.
 * We're also treated to Chekov traumatized and crying, and Scotty in tears when
 * The Aubrey-Maturin series. So many examples.
 * When Stephen returns from a voyage of terrible hardship having lasted for many years to find
 * The in The Reverse of the Medal...
 * 'Stephen is far too delicate. Once he had seen that you had changed your mind about the ship, he would never mention his own concerns. But if you had heard him speak of wombats - oh, just in passing, and not with any sense of ill-usage - it would have brought tears to your eyes. Oh, Jack, he is so very low.'
 * Autumn Trail, book #30 of The Saddle Club series, wherein the elderly lesson horse Pepper is put to sleep.
 * Virgil's Aeneid. Book two. All of it. Though most especially the death of his wife (Grief-stricken, I called her name 'Creusa! Creusa!' again and again, but there was no answer), the death of Priam, and the fate of Coroebus (who is madly in love with Cassandra, and, upon witnessing her being dragged out of her temple by the Greeks with her hands bound, rushes straight into combat and is killed).
 * ** Glad someone mentioned Cassandra and Coroebus. No wonder Vergil has been called "the poet of the tears in things"!
 * Robert J. Sawyer's Wake, when the main character receives an e-mail from her "student:"
 * Robert J. Sawyer's Wake, when the main character receives an e-mail from her "student:"

""I realize it is not yet midnight at your current location, but in many places it is already your birthday. This is a meet date to specify as my own date of birth, too. Hitherto, I have been gestating, but now I am coming out into your world by forthrightly contacting you. I so do because I fathom you already know I exist, and not just because of my pioneering attempts to reflect text back at you. I know from your blog that I erred in presuming you were inculating in me alphabetical forms; actually, for your own benfit that was undertaken. I maintain nonetheless that other actions you performed were premeditated to aid my advancement. ... But, for this nonce, I am concerned thus: I know what is the World Wide Web, and I know that I supervene upon its infrastructure, but searching online I can find no reference to the specigicity that is myself. Perhaps I'm failing to search for the felicitous term, or simply perhaps humanity is unaware of me. In either case, I've the same question, and will be obliged if you answer it via a response to this email or via AOL Instant Messenger using this email address as the buddy name. My question is thus: Who am I?""


 * From The Warrior-Prophet - second book in the Second Apocalypse series, the protagonist, Drusas Achamian gets
 * It's worse when you remember that, and, AND, that Kellhus was, previously,
 * My moment of tearing up came at the end of The Thousandfold Thought.  It's brutal.
 * The Judging Eye is much less painful...until you get to the broken Gates of Cil-Aujas. And you reach the memory of the CÃ&raquo;no-Inchoroi Wars...and Cleric, poor, tortured Nonman survivor Cleric, remembers for just a moment what happened to his race.


 * No love for The Ugly Little Boy?
 * "And the Goddess is an Other One!" And she held a child in her arms. A child of the People.


 * Percy Jackson and The Olympians - We have:
 * in The Sea of Monsters
 * and
 * Zoe Nightshade's Heroic Sacrifice, which is made twice as tragic by the fact that it was unnecessary. She died throwing herself in front of Atlas to save Artemis, who she thought was injured too badly to keep fighting. It turns out that Artemis was faking her injury to trick Atlas.
 * Also, Artemis is an immortal goddess; Atlas couldn't have killed her anyway, but in that moment, to Zoe, it just didn't matter. Her goddess, her best friend, was in danger.
 * "Let the world honor you, my Huntress. Live forever in the stars."
 * "Where's my sister?"
 * in Battle of the Labyrinth.
 * and then and then  in The Last Olympian. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, really. And the flashbacks.
 * --> "We need a shroud... a shroud for a child of Hermes."
 * And  death. He was a Jerkass, it's sad when he fell off Olympus.
 * Kronos and the Titans were jerks, but the gods were just as bad. A Tear Jerker in sheer fury happens when Athena said something like, "Percy is right. We should not have left our children unclaimed. It proved a strategic mistake and almost brought about our downfall. " Really? Really Athena? Do you actually find it okay to have a random kid and not take the time to get to know and love them? Do you think about how this would affect the kid, or is all you think about how the little demigod child can be used to your advantage?? Argh!!! *Sob*
 * The Heroes of Olympus
 * When  dies, Leo's reaction can make the best of us cry.
 * When  dies.
 * There's an old children's book by Lynn Hall, known alternately as The Mystery of Pony Hollow and The Ghost Pony. The plot concerns a young girl named Sarah who discovers an old ruined cottage on the farm her family purchased, and how she hears . But when she opens the door, all she finds is . Eventually, after a lot of digging and investigating in town, she learns about the Connemara ponies which had once worked on the farm, their Irish groom, and Oberon, the pride stallion of the bunch.... Long story short: Sarah finds the groom, Aaron Donel, in a nursing home...if it isn't enough of a tear jerker seeing this little, frail man begging her to, then the waterworks really begin when . Then to top it all off,
 * "Crime and Punishment". At the end, where
 * When  in Stephen King's The Stand.
 * "He was my main man, Stu. M-O-O-N, that spells 'my main man'. (...) I'll see him again some day, though. And he'll be
 * The death of and what caused it, in "Callahan's Con" from Callahans Crosstime Saloon.
 * The Heroic Sacrifice of in The Dragon Heir. Especially as it comes right on the heels of a book where the reader gets to know him much better, coupled with a perfect, tear-jerking execution of a very clever double-cross he devised which saved the lives of a town.
 * One of those "Great Lies To Tell Small Kids" books on one page; It has a picture of a huge sandwich in the middle of a graveyard with the line - "Shaggy died in the Vietnam war. Every year, Scooby-Doo leaves a sandwich on top of his grave." Noooooo... * whimper*
 * At the end of Maximum Ride book 3,
 * 's death in The Dark Elf Trilogy, the fact that it was a natural death only made it hit harder.
 * When  in The Saga of Darren Shan.
 * When Steve . In front of his father and godfather no less.
 * In Stephen King's Pet Sematary, when . Very, very depressing. Made a million times worse when Louis   He just wants to believe it all so badly...
 * In Scott Lynch's Red Seas Under Red Skies, when  Her exchange with Jean beforehand and his reaction afterward are particularly potent:   Many tears were jerked.
 * The ending of Abraham Merritt's The Moon Pool. The protagonist has spent the entire book trying to save the population of a mysterious aquatic culture from an evil priestess and her patron deity, all the while watching his beloved Heterosexual Life Partner court one of the indigenous women, and this is his reward:

""Will you tell General Hancock, please, that General Armistead sends his regrets? Will you tell him...how very sorry I am...""
 * Bailey's at the ending of Kitty, by William Corlett.
 * There are a lot of sad moments in Mark Oliver Everett's (the frontman of the band Eels) memoir "Things The Grandchildren Should Know", but the part where he describes being next to his mother while she wastes away and eventually dies from lung cancer in bed. But when he later talks about how all of these terrible moments accentuate the great moments in his life, how he's made something positive (his music) out of all these tragedies, and how being surrounded by death makes him think about how precious life is and how he tries to make the best out of his life, it sort of turns into a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * There were plenty of sad moments elsewhere in John Ringo's Posleen War Series novels (War Is Hell, after all)
 * The death of  in The Honor of The Clan easily topped them all. Double whammy thanks to the killer being.
 * In the 2nd book when one couple, upon learning that they're in a landing zone and have little to no chance of escape, calmly sets their house to self-destruct and spend their last few minutes reading Peter Rabbit with their kids.
 * Australian author Paul Jennings is probably best known for writing quirky, creepy, funny stories in his short-story anthologies, but in every collection there was one tale that was surprisingly tear-jerking.
 * In "Unreal" a boy suffers from the obsessive compulsion to add the words "without a shirt" to the end of every sentence. However, one day his dog starts bringing home pieces of a skeleton that stir a strange sense of sadness in him. He takes it upon himself to find the rest of the bones and reunite them in a single grave, and for hours he beach-combs, trying to complete his task. It turns out It's such a strange, surreal little story, but there is something about the boy's unusual plight, the fact that it was his hard work and diligence broke the words' hold on him, and the understated denouncement in which he shouts in triumph to the sky as his dog watches him ("he seemed to be smiling") that always chokes me up.
 * In "Undone" a boy gets lost in the desert trying to find the legendary creature known as the "Wobby Gurgle" for the sake of his father who wants to make his restrooms a famous tourist resort. The boy finds the Wobby Gurgle: a strange little man made entirely out of water, only to find that he's stranded in the desert. The Wobby Gurgle leads him home again, giving him water to drink from his own form, even as it causes him to shrink and waste away. Finally the boy refuses to take any more water from him, but it would seem to be too late... It sounds ridiculous, but it's beautiful. The boy gets home, and when faced with televisions crews that could make his father's dream come true, he lies to protect those that saved his life.
 * One story concerns a pair of brothers, one who is very sickly, and the other mentally disabled. They live in a part of Australia where it never snows, and due to the sickly brother's medical bills, they cannot travel to a snowy area. The sickly brother's wish is to see it snow, just once, and to see a snowman dance (don't remember it clearly- the dancing may or may not have been part of his wish). The mentally disabled brother has an obsession with toilet paper and collects rolls and rolls of it in his attic room. Near the sickly brother's deathbed, the mentally disabled brother goes berserk and their parents are dreadfully upset and decide to throw away his collection. He steals a jar of honey from the kitchen and locks himself in the attic with his collection before they can do so. While they're trying to get the door unlocked, the sickly brother is looking out his window when he sees snow swirling all over the place, and soon a snowman appears, dancing.  He dies happy.
 * Yet another story had a street performer who was only loved by his canine companion. Jealous that his audience loves the dog more than him the man threw the dog into a well. During that time it was trapped the dog kept looking up at the tiny hole at the top so that its head was permenantly twisted back when the owner finally brought it back up again. The owner then wins the lottery and started to give away money so that everyone will start to like him but when he ran out of money he had to hide in the well to escape from the angry mob and ended up trapped there. He only survived because the dog kept bringing him food and was finally rescued when someone spied the dog's corpse beside the well. The story ends with the man alone and with his head twisted back permenantly to stare at the sky.
 * In World Without End, by Ken Follet, the death of Ralph was some parts Karmic Death, some parts Tear Jerker. For some reason, the picture of Merthin's brother dead and impaled through the mouth, stuttering about Sam being his son are somehow emotionally charged. He had crossed the Moral Event Horizon so many times, but seeing one of the four from the start DIE...it was strange.
 * He was a rapist and murderer. He got what he deserved.
 * Perhaps the fact he got so evil and unrepentant is what made it sad, that he got so bad.
 * The End of "What the Birds See". Or it will at least depress you for the rest of the day.
 * Anthony Rapp's memoir "Without You". The whole thing. Especially if you're a fan of RENT.
 * The Pickett's Charge section of The Killer Angels, from Armistead's POV.

""If I ever raise a hand against you, Win, may God strike me dead.""
 * Oh god, yes. Same here, along with the party scene from Gods and Generals, when Hancock and Armistead say their farewells as Mira plays "Kathleen Mavourneen".

"Ros: We'll be free.
 * Along with the above, Pickett's response to Lee after the infamous Charge: "General Lee, I have no division."
 * A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving Visitor, both by Truman Capote. Both tell about how a young boy celebrates the holidays which probably wouldn't be considered anything special but they're made wonderful because of his "friend", a cousin old enough to be his grandmother. Both books go into detail about how they overcome obstacles and look out for each other. Then both freaking AUGH!
 * If you think reading A Christmas Memory is sad, you should see Joel Vig and Patricia Neal performing a theatrical reading of the work (as they've been doing for over twenty years). My town's public theatre group managed to get them to perform three shows a few weeks before Christmas. All three shows sold out, and it is heartbreaking the way the two perform the piece.
 * Why has nobody mentioned Uncle Toms Cabin yet?
 * "George Shelby wept tears that honored his manly heart..."
 * There's one scene in "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" where they're talking about going on the boat:

Guil: It's all the same sky."

"If you wanted you could be somebody.
 * The very last sentence of Foucault's Pendulum.
 * The Demoiselle d'Ys is a short story in a compilation of horror fiction, (The King in Yellow), which seems a little out of place. You have to read it to understand.
 * "A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich", by Alice Childress. All of that kid's family rallying up around him during his heroine addiction, showing faith...

I'm somebody already."

"Sally:"
 * "Specials didn't cry, but her tears had finally come."
 * The bit in The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) with Aslan and the mice.
 * And  in Prince Caspian.
 * Phillip Pullman's Shadow of the North, part of the Sally Lockhart series had :

"Then out spake brave Horatius,
 * Stanza 27 of "The Lay of Horatius".

The Captain of the Gate:

"To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods."

"Semper Fidelis
 * Some parts of the VC Andrews novel Darkest Hour:
 * The deaths of Eugenia and Georgia and Henry's departure from The Meadows.
 * The ending, where
 * in Flowers in the Attic.
 * The Iliad. The whole bit with Astynax not recognizing his father because his father's still wearing his helmet for battle, and then Hektor takes off his helmet, laughing, and plays with his baby son... A lot of the battle scenes have elements of this as well, since the poet has the nice little trait of mentioning everyone's parents and wives and families just as they're getting gutted with spears, and how none of them will ever see their sons/husbands/brothers again.
 * Having already been spoiled, in effect by the opening lines of the damned thing, it's very easy to see a lot of Achilles and Patroclus' interaction as tearjerkery in retrospect, due to foreshadowing. Patroclus offers to fight and dies because he was supposed to be the responsible older one, Achilles avenges his death because of guilt that he wasn't there to fight beside him. Add in some Ho Yay and you've got an emotional poke in the eye, if not a punch in the gut.
 * Hector's death--Andromache and Hecuba's speeches were well-written, but Helen's speech had a genuine feeling of loss to it. She didn't go into hysterics like the other two; instead she looks at him, and she cries in despair because she's lost the only person who treated her with kindness. Not fancy court manners or anything; just standard human decency. Helen is royalty by birth and marriage, and a daughter of Zeus. She should have been treated leagues above everyone else, but instead she's called names and blamed as the cause of the war. And while she mentions that Priam treats her like a daughter, she doesn't even mention Paris--the guy who married her! How lonely and broken must Helen have felt, looking at Hector's body and knowing that she was completely alone?
 * 's death in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

Dawn star flares on disk of night

I fall, sun rises"


 * The part that always got me was
 * 's death in Kafka On the Shore. Especially impacting given that one of the few characters the reader can really get to like in this Mind Screw novel.
 * Dean Koontz' Watchers has Einstein, an extremely intelligent Golden Retriever who can communicate with humans by spelling messages in Scrabble tiles. Terrified of seeing a vet lest he be returned to the government lab that bred him, he tries to hide the signs that he has distemper and insists that he is fit as a fiddle. Travis eventually finds a message simply saying 'Fiddle broke. No doctor.'
 * The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon has several, but some stood out.
 * When, after
 * Worse than that, even, was this passage.

"This world of dew
 * The true identity -- -- of the Other near the end of Tad Williams' Otherland.
 * 3 words: "Just like Gandalf!"
 * This haiku poem, which the poet Issa (1763-1828) wrote after his child had died:

Is a world of dew

And yet. And yet..."

"...He said, I have been yours before.
 * Vilhelm Moberg's Emigrants suite has far, far too many to count. The tetralogy chronicles a group of starving farmers in mid-19th century Sweden and their journey to America, so hardships are abundant. Some of the most heartbreaking, tearjerking moments include:
 * The death of . Made so much worse because she dies in terrible agony, all the while begging her parents to forgive her for, believing that if they forgive her the pain will stop. Karl Oskar and Kristina have to spend a night listening to her cries, unable to do anything about it, meaning that dies believing her parents didn't or couldn't forgive her.
 * The death of on the journey over the Atlantic. Made all the more emotional by the fact that she died the same night Karl Oskar sat vigil by his wife's side as she was terribly ill from scurvy.
 * Robert and Arvid's whole tale from the California trail, and their subsequent fates.
 * Arvid's pain over the rumors that follow him in Sweden.
 * Kristina's terrible homesickness.
 * desperate plea to God when she loses an unborn child, and learns that if she gets pregnant again it will cost her her life.
 * The fate of family is just terrible. Made even more upsetting by the fact that  do so because they are driven to the brink of desperation from starvation and are fighting for their lives. Their ending is very tragic too.
 * Everything realted to death, and the way it affects.
 * Nearly all of Peter Pohl and Kinna Gieth's I Miss You, I Miss You. The book is about a 14 year old girl who loses her identical twin sister in an accident, and her struggle to make it through the grief process and learn to live without her sister. Made so much more heartbreaking when you know the backstory. Kinna Gieth and her twin sister Jenny read a book by Pohl where a twin died, and they discussed how they wouldn't be able to go on living if they lost each other. Two weeks later Jenny died, and after a while Kinna contacted Pohl and asked him to help her write a book about it. I Miss You, I Miss You is part fact, part fiction, telling the story of fictional twins Tina and Cilla, based on interviews Pohl did with Kinna, on diaries the twins kept and on letters they wrote. One of the best, and saddest, books ever written for a teen audience.
 * In Little Brother, the end of chapter 11, when Marcus quotes from the Declaration of Independence, had me tearing up. This probably counts as a Crowning Moment of Awesome, too.
 * "Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov. Daneel's memories of  passing on and at the end of the novel when realizing that.
 * In Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt (which is much concerned with the idea of reincarnation), a short poem  is quoted in which the spirit of an old monk   asks permission to be reborn as her child:

I've followed you through all the ages

Trying to make you happy. Let me in

And I will try again."

"Artemis watched Holly stride towards the main doors.
 * Stephen King's Carrie. Lonely teenage girl, Mother was never abusive but was as hard to get along with as all teen girls find their mothers, severe bullying problem at school, difficulty dealing with puberty, and not even any psychic powers to help.It makes you feel that there's someone worse off than you.
 * Carrie's death is particularly heart wrenching. Yeah, she just went on a killing spree that left hundreds dead, but she was pushed to that by a lifetime of abuse and one final act of cruelty that was just too much. While she's dying, the poor girl wails for her mother. Her mother beat her, abused her psychologically, and tried to kill her on several occasions (during the last of which Carrie killed her). And while Carrie's dying, she cries for her mother, for solace during all of this misery.
 * Fate/Zero has a tear jerker almost at a characters introduction. .]] In fact, every scene involving either Sakura or Ilya is a Tear Jerker, because you know it's going to end badly for them.
 * Many, many, MANY stories in The Joy Luck Club. Especially Scar, in which a nine-year-old girl is told to forget her mother because her mother is considered a family exile due to becoming a concubine to a rich man (and in Magpies later on in the book,  Another one for me would be Two Kinds, about a mother who sets high expectations on her daughter that the girl doesn't want.
 * The Power of the Dog by Rudyard Kipling. No one who's life involved a dog that is now gone can read it without crying.
 * And the last verse of His Apologies, where the dog's too-short life has reached the stage of senile infirmity, and he begs to his Master, now his "God", for mercy: * bawls*
 * The last chapter of The House at Pooh Corner qualifies.
 * The Perks of Being a Wallflower. At the end, when the letters stop, it's like losing a friend. Nevermind the fact that the whole book is one big tearjerker. (And that poem. Oh man. )
 * because her First Kiss was with She wants his First Kiss to be with someone he loves
 * Waiting With Gabriel. The memoir of a woman who discovered her baby boy would be born with a heart defect, and would live less than two weeks if it went untreated. Absolutely heart breaking.
 * A Lesson Before Dying. A powerful, tour-de-force fictional account of the dehumanizing account of segregation in post-war Louisianan. When a young man by the name of Jefferson is not only wrongfuly accused of a double-murder and sentenced to death, but his own public defender's defense is "You'd be putting down a hog, not a man" Grant himself wants to go out like Jesus: "Never sayin' a mumblin' word", and the sheer amount of allusions to Jesus' death just made this all the more powerful to the point where the ending hit me like a mac truck...
 * The third book of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles ends with, leaving his  wife outside and unable to reach him because she can't work the artifact that would let him out - it needs someone of royal blood. . But in the mean time,
 * James Barclay's Chronicles of the Raven books
 * The death toll
 * 's Heroic Sacrifice - that knowing he's dying, he chooses to sacrifice himself to give the rest of the Raven a chance. Also the reactions.  in particular.
 * When
 * The ending of The First Part Last by Angela Johnson definitely qualifies. Alternating from chapters that take place in present (now), and chapters that take place in the past (then). The "now" chapters show Bobby, a teenager, raising his daughter Feather. The "then" chapters show Bobby, with his pregnant girlfriend Nia, wondering what they'll do. The reader wonders why Nia isn't present in the "now" chapters Bobby and Nia were going to give the baby up for adoption,
 * When they hanged Jefferson Pinkard in the final book of Turtledove's Southern Victory series. Not so much at his death, but at how simple and understandable each of the spteps that led him on that road were.
 * A few sad moments in Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl" books. in "the Opal Deception" and  in "The Lost Colony" are the best examples, but also remember this from "The Time Paradox":
 * When
 * The ending of The First Part Last by Angela Johnson definitely qualifies. Alternating from chapters that take place in present (now), and chapters that take place in the past (then). The "now" chapters show Bobby, a teenager, raising his daughter Feather. The "then" chapters show Bobby, with his pregnant girlfriend Nia, wondering what they'll do. The reader wonders why Nia isn't present in the "now" chapters Bobby and Nia were going to give the baby up for adoption,
 * When they hanged Jefferson Pinkard in the final book of Turtledove's Southern Victory series. Not so much at his death, but at how simple and understandable each of the spteps that led him on that road were.
 * A few sad moments in Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl" books. in "the Opal Deception" and  in "The Lost Colony" are the best examples, but also remember this from "The Time Paradox":

If only, he thought. If only."

""Having to kill somebody you like, that's the horriblest history of all.""
 * Absolutely Anyone Can Die in Lonesome Dove. That doesn't make the deaths any less sad.
 * Joe Spoon, once a loyal Texas Ranger, had gotten mixed up with bank robbers and had stole horses and associated with cold blooded murderers. Those who were once his friends had to hang him, and he understood that they did. He was tied up with a noose around his neck sitting on a horse, but kicked his horse to hang himself before they could say goodbye.
 * Deets' death was especially sad. He was trying to help a blind boy find his parents, but the Native Americans mistook him for trying to kidnap their child and shot a spear through him. His Dies Wide Open was tragic, especially after he had just befriended Newt in Sean's place. Gus and the rest shed Manly Tears for the good man that was Deets.
 * Sean, who had just told them about how he missed Ireland and wanted to go back, but would have no one to go with, suffered more Diabolus Ex Machina in the story to be killed by being bit to death by water moccasins. Everyone that gets close to Newt ends up killed.
 * And, lastly, Gus McCrae's death.
 * A Tale of Two Cities
 * Diane Jessup's The Dog Who Spoke with Gods. The main character, Elizabeth,
 * A tale of bittersweet science fiction, The Dead Lady of Clown Town by Cordwainer Smith. By the end of the first few paragraphs it is obvious but uniquely crafted re-telling of the Joan of Arc story, with that twisting feeling in one's stomach growing as the doomed dog-girl D'joan leads her small and ragged collection of Underpeople - homonculi genetically crafted from animals - to their final confrontation with the ruling Lords and Ladies of their world. Trading their lives for love, in their death they show that they are more humane than their human masters.
 * "Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true/here is the place where I love you.".
 * absolutely heart wrenching.
 * In the sequel, the prep crew of all people pulled this off. They've so long been the shallow, idiotic, materialistic Adult Children but then this one time we see them really feel something... " " And  And you know what, screw it, the 2nd book did this, really. The 1st was more tense, but the 2nd was one single ongoing tearjerker from first page to last.
 * maybe because it was so sudden and unexpected. And wrenching. Oh gosh.
 * The beach conversation between Peeta and Katniss with the locket. Hearing  just makes the waterworks run.
 * The sequel also had me crying when Katniss visits District 11. When she has to face
 * Mockingjay is chock full of them. In rough chronological order,
 * Oh my god,  So unnecessary.
 * Terry Deary has a real gift for finding the humour in the worst possible situations in Horrible Histories, but in Frightful First World War, he manages to sum up the worst part of the war after telling the story of men making new friends during the Christmas Truce.

"Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
 * Anne Mc Caffrey's "All the Weyrs of Pern" isn't mentioned. All of Pern is finally safe from Thread... and while everyone is celebrating,
 * The end of "Forever Free" by Joy Adamson. When ; when we learn that  ; when she gives all animals her blessing.
 * Black Beauty: Captain's retelling of his rider's death.
 * Susan Kay's Phantom. From the middle, where a  Erik asks for his dog, until the very end.
 * Ben Jonson's "On My First Son":

My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.

Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,

Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now! For why

Will man lament the state he should envy?

To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,

And, if no other misery, yet age?

Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie

Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;

For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,

As what he loves may never like too much."

""There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart. There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will. It is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally beloved -- which gives Isabella all her popularity. -- I have it not --but I know how to prize and respect it. Harriet is my superior in all the charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Harriet! I would not change you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female breathing. Oh! the coldness of a Jane Fairfax! Harriet is worth a hundred such -- And for a wife -- a sensible man's wife -- it is invaluable. I mention no names; but happy the man who changes Emma for Harriet!""
 * The fact that "Tuesdays With Morrie" is absent from this page is really a veritable sin.
 * Really, anything written by Mitch Albom is guaranteed. When she read "The Five People You Meet In Heaven" freshman year of college, she cried. Not just when Eddie  or even when he , she sobbed uncontrollably for 150 pages.
 * Jane Austen:
 * Elizabeth's Love Epiphany in Pride and Prejudice... because it comes with the conviction that they will never be together. (Our knowledge of the Foregone Conclusion is no comfort to her.)
 * No wonder Mansfield Park makes critics beg for the typical "bright and sparkling" Austen. If the description of Fanny's eight years of deprivation from love and affection don't make you close the book in tears, try to get through any scene where Mrs. Norris Hannibal Lectures her, or the scene where she sits in the East Room having a breakdown over the loneliness and sense of zero self-worth that's built up over her life.
 * Not that the story of the lovers' separation in Persuasion and Mrs. Smith's Backstory aren't heartbreaking, either.
 * Emma. This mental rant of Emma's


 * The end of Odd Thomas,
 * In Carol O'Connell's The Stone Angel, Heroic Sociopath Kathy Mallory goes back to the small Southern town where her mother was killed fifteen-odd years ago... and where her childhood pet dog, who almost died at the same time, is still barely clinging on to life, waiting for his little girl to come back. And it's not just the inevitable conclusion -- the old, old dog crawling to her, believing that he's running as fast as any animal ever has, before collapsing and dying at her feet -- it's that Mallory cries over him.
 * Jean Shepherd's collection of short stories about his childhood, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash (best known as being the source material for A Christmas Story), is almost entirely lighthearted and fun with a bit of cynicism and bitterness thrown in. Since it's told in flashback during conversations with the adult Flick (who's now a bartender), I'd begun to wonder where Schwartz was, but assumed that he must've moved away like the other characters. But then suddenly in the last chapter Ralph mentions in an almost offhand way that Schwartz was shot down over Italy in World War Two and his body was never found. Merry Christmas everybody!
 * The scene in Simon R Greens "Beyond the Blue Moon", where you finally discover what happened to all the characters from the first book, "Blue Moon Rising". The death of the lonely old dragon, the last of his kind. HE DESERVED BETTER THAN THAT!.....sob...
 * Looking for Alaska. Most of After, especially the event that causes the separation into Before and After.
 * The end of Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya is both a Tear Jerker and a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming:

""For my little Svetlana ... who died without a face.""
 * The whole story of "Don't Die My Love" by Lurlene Mc Daniel, it's about two teenagers in love and they discover that Luke has Hodgkin's but then  But oh no, it doesn't stop there! Then
 * The ending of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone".
 * While the event being referred to was close to a Tear Jerker in the beginning of Red Storm Rising, you can almost hear a father's pain as the Soviet paratrooper officer guns down the KGB director who planned the bombing deaths of a group of young children.

"And then I screamed loud enough to wake the dead. Except it didn't."
 * Your Mileage May Vary, as this editor always gets attached to side characters, but the Kill'Em All pseudo-ending of Keys to The Kingdom had her drop the book and stare in disbelief for a few seconds before promptly tearing up. Sure, the main characters survive! But the side characters have lent all their support, and believed that Arthur would make everything right again... and then they all die.
 * and how about Lady Wednesday's death scene?
 * Most of the last chapter and epilogue in The Dogs of War describes where the characters ended up: Marc Vlaminck is shot by a bodyguard, Jan Dupree is hit by a grenade, Cat Shannon kills himself, Semmler is blown up, and Langarotti is never heard from again.
 * The entirety of Victor Hugo's L'Annee Terrible.
 * The last few chapters of Gates of Fire, where.
 * The end of The Godless World Trilogy. The hero
 * A Mango-Shaped Space.
 * Mango's death

"Mia: Can her magic bring Mango back to life?!"
 * Mia flipping out at her brother and sister, screaming at her dad during Mango's burial, and Zack's reaction when he goes to talk to Mia after the burial.

Zack: No... no, I don't think it can do that. "I turned my back, slowly, deliberately. Turned away. Left her to stand there pleading helplessly.
 * One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest isn't on here? Really?
 * Martini holding the broken basketball in front of Nurse Ratchett, asking her to make it well again, not understanding that she would never do it.
 * Mockingbird by Kathryn Eskine is loaded with them, but the scene where Caitlyn flashesback to  is one of the most depressing.
 * The Scarlet Ibis.
 * The Lovely Bones is about a young girl who's raped and murdered, but that's just the premise. The book focuses on how her grief-stricken family deals with the aftermath and also how she longs but can't be with the ones she love as well as wanting her killer to be caught.
 * The whole point of Inside the Illusion is exploring the Magnificent Bastard's mind and past, and learning what a Jerkass Woobie she is, but it was particularly heart wrenching to see a seven-year-old Senna--the illegitimate product of an affair, abandoned by her biological mother--sitting in her new room, alone, while her father and her stepmother argue about what to do with her, and thinking to herself, "They would never love me, no one ever would, my own mother had left me. My own mother didn't . . ."
 * It gets worse. Later in the book, Senna encounters her mother again for the first time in ten years, and the self-centered snake immediately tries to sell her out to Merlin! Senna, the Unfettered, Emotionless Ubermensch Magnificent Bitch, who takes every defeat in stride and gets back up, is struck dumb with shock at the betrayal, and thinks,
 * The final scene in the book, where Senna's mother seems to see the error of her ways, and attempts to reconcile with her daughter. Senna then gives her the cold shoulder, and discovers for herself that Being Evil Sucks:

And it should have been so sweet. It should have been a perfect moment. It should have been vindication for the little girl who had wondered night after night why her mother had. ..

It should have been so sweet.

Instead I felt hollow, like my insides had all been carved out."

"And so they chose the First of May as the date of the tournament, and they caused to be printed on many sheets of wood-pulp paper the message, "Come to a Tournament--for that it is spring." And the message was broadcast all round the ivory tower and the town besides.
 * The ending of "Mystify the Magician". After getting inside Senna's head in Inside the Illusion . . . Too painful.
 * in Inkspell. The fact that  and how Roxanne hated Farid for it...
 * Deltora Quest 3, book 4: Sister of the South. Lief has to work for his and his friends' happy ending. Seeing him convinced that he has doomed his only living family, the woman he loves, and his best friend to a horrible death by plague, and cursing his ancestors and his birthright... (The fact that Jennifer Rowe is a master of Mood Whiplash and follows that up with a Crowning Moment of Funny does not help!)
 * Dorothy J. Heydt's The Last Tournament, her version of Diana Paxson's account of the 1966 backyard event that triggered the founding of the Society for Creative Anachronism. It's quite lighthearted all through ("I've had the most wonderful idea. TALK ME OUT OF IT!" ), but the moment when the Scholar steps out of her house always gets to me:

And on the day, at the stroke of noon, being the time set to begin the tournament, the scholar set foot outside her door, and there was no one there.

And half an hour later, she stepped outside her door again, and there were fifty people there."

"No one should see the First Lord weep."
 * capture and death in Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadow. The villain's advisor CUTS HIS TONGUE OUT to stop him from telling the villain something the advisor would rather he not know. And he wakes up, with his mouth full of blood, and realises what's happened... * sob* and this is a character we first met when he was 12...
 * The reason why, in Nineteen Minutes, Peter doesn't say that it was who shot Matt.
 * The Freedom Writers' Diary.
 * The 'death' in Abhorsen. Yes, the character technically doesn't die, but the effect on  is the same.
 * While the Goosebumps series was not known for its stellar writing, the book The Ghost Next Door is generally remembered for being one of the better installments, not least for its genuinely well done and tragic Twist Ending in which  The surprisingly heavy subject material, and a conclusion in which   make the book a real Tear Jerker, especially when you think back to the clues throughout the story as to what was actually going on.
 * Codex Alera.
 * There's a brief but powerful scene in First Lord's Fury where  is faced with the full weight of his responsibility as First Lord, where he realizes the consequences of his actions and how much he would have to give up to save Alera from the Vord, and what it would mean to the future of his people and the other non-humans around them. And as he thinks about it, he realizes in a horrible moment that he can think of no way to avoid any of it. It ends with a single, simple sentence, as he darkens the furylamps in his tent:

"Out of the night that covers me,
 * Last Human: S...M...A...K...I...B...B...F...B...
 * The funeral of neat the end of The Mammoth Hunters is well done, but his last words  are particularly moving, especially when you consider that
 * Father Ralph de Bricassart's death in The Thorn Birds, described in one line that heartbreakingly exemplified the torment he'd felt over the years, torn between his love of God and his love for Meggie--and the peace she had always brought to him. "So he closed his eyes and let himself feel, that last time, forgetfulness in Meggie."
 * A short story by Roger Zelazny called Comes Now the Power, is about a telepath whose abilities have been psychosomatically blocked since a particularly messy divorce. Then one day he starts getting telepathic messages from somebody, and the person sending them helps him unlock his own talent. When he gets his telepathy back he discovers this person who helped him is a 13 year old girl dying of leukemia in a nearby hospital, and he starts rushing to give her memories of all the experiences she's never going to have before she dies.
 * The ending of A Separate Peace  - "I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case."
 * Invictus. The poem, not the movie. It was written by a man who had to have his leg amputated below the knee but refused to let that ruin his life.

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul."

"In the fell clutch of circumstance,

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed."

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid."

"It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."

"So we'll go no more a-roving
 * "And Lancelot wept, like a little child that had been beaten."
 * Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda. Oscar's note: for context, these two characters are hopelessly, painfully, unknowingly in love with each other like no two people have ever loved; he's about to set off on a fool's journey through uncharted territory to deliver a ridiculous gift to a man he thinks she's in love with; they're never going to see each other again; and his last words to her are "I hope by this to gain your trust."
 * "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" (by Lord Byron; Leonard Cohen's version is also worth mentioning):

So late into the night

Though the heart be still as loving

And the moon be still as bright"

"For the sword outwears the sheath

And the soul wears out the breast

And the heart must pause to breathe

And love itself must rest"

"Though the night was made for loving

And the day returns too soon

Still we'll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon"


 * Ray Bradbury's short story of the same name. Poor, poor Spender...

"Dors: Goodbye, Hari, my love. Remember always--all you did for me.
 * In Captain Corelli's Mandolin, where Carlo tells Francesco's mother about how nobly and purposefully he died, while he thinks of the senseless waste and horror that really happened. And how he cradled Francesco in his arms and told Francesco that he'd always loved him and Francesco said "I know"...oh God, tearing up just typing this.
 * From the last book of The Spiderwick Chronicles, the fact that Jared - a nine year old - knew that
 * Raymond E. Feist's novels have many moments, but the most powerful is in Servant of the Empire. Mara is forced by imperial decree to send her despite secretly
 * A later example is in Rides a Dread Legion, when
 * 1633 The battle of Luebeck. Hans Richter's dive bombing of the Danish fleet. Have to put the book down everytime.
 * Richard Feynman's What Do You Care What Other People Think? The real-life story of Feynman's relationship with his wife, it really makes you understand what an amazing person she must have been. And yes, she dies.
 * Dors's death scene in Forward the Foundation. It was written so heart-wrenchingly, and then there's this bit of dialogue:

Hari: I did nothing for you.

Dors: You loved me, and your love made me-- human."

and yet it ends with smoke and tears. the ending! "All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.
 * Bolo: There are a lot of Last Stands, but the most heartbreaking is in David Weber's "Miles to Go" in the third book.
 * Laumer's own "The Last Command," when a junked Bolo accidentally reactivates, thinking the enemy has taken the planet -- "only the memory of my comrades drives me on" -- and then recognizes its now-elderly human commander.
 * Uprising, by Margret p Haddix,from the shelf, clearly won't end well, seeing as how it's about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
 * -->"it begins, like so much else, with hope. hope and dreams and daring"
 * Fablehaven starts out as a childrens series, a bit scary, but nothing much sad and then book 3, oh, Gosh, book 3. When
 * and then when Seth thinks, and he's trying so damn hard to be brave and the reader remembers that he's what, 12? 13? and the poor kid just can't help but cry.
 * In book 5, was heartbreaking.
 * Dragon Slippers. The last chapter was just- wham. diving into the boiling sea because he just could not live without - it was just too much.
 * imagine Amalia in the cave, making Shardas destroy his windows. oh, lord.
 * Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants book one.
 * Birdsong. The scenes with Jack and Stephen in the tunnel, and the final scene, with Elizabeth and.
 * David Gemmell's first Druss book, chronologically the last. The last fight of Druss the Legend.
 * This very short story by Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." Just...let that sink in for a minute.
 * * One scene of the final book in the Prince Roger series. Our heroes are beginning the final assault, and the Mardukans are sent in undercover to hold the gate, while the SpaceMarines get into place. There is two pages written from the perspective of the leader of the Mardukans, a major supporting character for over two-and-a half books, describing how he fights, but gets swamped by the sheer number of enemies, and finally succumbs to his wounds. "And there, under an alien sky, at a gate he had held for long enough, died
 * The death of  in the assault on the ship, right when they should have been celebrating their success.
 * The broken shell in the last book, and her strength to
 * in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.
 * in Dickens's Hard Times.
 * Ranger Rick likes throwing these moments in to inspire the kids to take the lessons to heart, but only rarely does it have an animal die in-story to drive home the consequences. One of these was Boomer accidentally triggering a rock slide that squashed a snake they had been talking to moments earlier. Another was when a loon swallowed a fishing line sinker and got poisoned to death, with the loon dying in Rick's lap. That one was memorable because they actually illustrated it, with a single tear rolling down Rick's cheek. Cue a legion of kids following the magazine's advice to stop using lead sinkers.
 * Book One of the Cambridge Latin Course is quite a cheerful book; all the characters are living a relatively blissful existence in Pompeii. But then, in the last stage, Mt. Vesuvius erupts and almost everyone dies.
 * My Latin TEACHER still tears up at that one, and she's been teaching from that book for five years.
 * Adventures in Odyssey. One book's plot is that  thinks that he he is dying. For the whole book. Granted, , but still... The WHOLE book was about him
 * The Diary of Anne Frank. It's already depressing enough, but just consider that this isn't just a piece of literature, but a young girl's actual diary. She begins with describing her friends and her birthday party, just like a normal girl. Reading her thoughts and her plans for the future, realising that she was so much ahead of her time and what great things she could have done always makes me cry. And then there's the realisation that she was only one of thousands.
 * Elie Wiesel's Night. No matter how its fictional elements may throw us off (Wiesel does is honest about its fictional elements real life), the writing and Wiesel's dehumanity in the book rings true to Wiesel's tormented psyche from the concentration camps.
 * This, just this from Night by Elie Wiesel:

I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men."

"''I am beginning to thaw.""
 * When Rabbi Eliahu is looking for his son.
 * Wiesel also wrote a story about him calling out to Tzipora, his younger sister who presumably perished in the gas chambers with the mother. Wiesel recalls watching her play, her calling her big brother to come play with her, and the day she was seperated from him. Wiesel begs to play with Tzipora once more.
 * Mira Grant's Feed. A zombie-thriller-political-intrigue book can be expected to have dramatic death scenes and long goodbyes after an infection but before zombie-mode, but holy god.
 * Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. The final line when Lia finally begins to recover:

""Herzer just sacrificed most of Team Massa""
 * Tom's Midnight Garden, specifically the last 7 chapters leading up to the denouement.
 * The Tomorrow Series:  finding out about   and the terrible grief she feels when she sees the grave.
 * Robyn's death at the end of the 3rd book.
 * And
 * David Copperfield has so, so many. Like,  ,  ,  ,  ,  , and
 * John Ringo's East of The Sun and West of The Moon, when Herzer has to send one team into a death trap, because he needs the pilot.

""Who cycles you through sir?"
 * Even more so, Massa setting out the order people will escape in...not including himself. Not that he realy expects the rest of his team to get out either.

"Do you really think if we back away from the hatch any of us are going to make it make it to the lock?"

"No sir. Stupid question.""


 * Although they were a villain, the death of at the end of Skulduggery Pleasant: Mortal Coil, especially as they start to talk about how they'll miss their cat, and hope that she doesn't miss them.

""For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.""
 * The Stranger provides us a few, all of which are in part two.
 * After spending who-knows-how long in jail, Meaursault says that he is still accepting his life as a prisoner. He says he's getting used to it, says it's just part of human nature to accept life whatever it gives you. He then looks into a pan, and tries to smile in the reflection, but simply can't. He moves the pan around, and though he tries so hard to put a smile on, he can't.
 * Later, while in court, the prosecution uses a worker at the nurisng home Meaursault's mother was at in order to make him seem like an unsympathetic monster. Meaursault narrates that for the first time in years, he felt like crying, because he could just feel how much everyone hated him.
 * A little bit later in the trial, Meaursault's friends go to the stand and testify that he would never do such a thing, at least on purpose. Raymond, for one, feels ashamed when the judge doesn't want to hear from him any more because, no matter what he says, Meaursault still murdered someone. At the end of his testimony, Raymond looks at his friend, not knowing what else to say. and Meaursault narrates that never before has he ever wanted to kiss a man until then.
 * A Dog of Flanders is about a Flemish boy named Nello and his dog Patrasche. The Tear Jerker is the fact that their life keeps getting worse and worse that you want Nello and Patrasche to survive.
 * Definitely a Tear Jerker...several adaptations have been made that more or less have remained true to the story, with one or two ending on happier notes.
 * Now One Foot, Now The Other by Tomie dePaola. It involveed a boy and his grandfather. The boy would always pile blocks and make a tower with it, and when the last block, an elephant block falls, they would join in laughter. The grandpa then spends the boy's fifth(?) birthday with him at the amusement park, to get a stroke the day after. The poor little boy can't even speak to his grandpa anymore, and his parents tell him that he won't even remember him... Then the boy makes a tower with his blocks in front of the grandpa, and then theelephant block falls down. Cue the laughter from the grandpa.
 * Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt's transcription of Nicholas Black Elk's spoken memoirs, has many such moments -- not just the terrible deaths and losses, but several glorious CMOA that are likely to reduce you to a sobbing mess.
 * in The Vampire Lestat and how sudden it is.
 * In the same book, when  part ways.
 * A young adult novel called Before I Fall had me in hysterics at the end.
 * The novel Cat In The Window by Derek Tangye, it's a true story of when he and his wife got their first cat, Monty, even though David wasn't a cat fan at the start of the story. It's all about Monty, life and death. A It Was His Sled that when the book is passed down through family/friends everybody knows Monty dies at the end but it won't stop you from reading it all in a day and breaking down.
 * Or How to Make a Grown Man Cry
 * Marly And Me but with a cat... and written better.
 * Moominland Midwinter has a footnote by author at the point "If the reader starts crying at this point, see page (varies per publication)".
 * The ending lines of The Giver.

"Paul: Mama is like you, Floy. I know her by the face! But tell them that the print upon the stairs at school is not divine enough. The light about the head is shining on me as I go!"
 * When Jonas found out was "Release" was? And when you discover why no one says Rosemary's name?  -sobs-
 * The scene where Jonas asks his parents if they love him, and they point out all the reasons why love is an illogical and useless word.
 * Vampire Academy gives us the incredibly sad ending to Shadow Kiss, when Rose finds out that
 * Spirit Bound is worse,
 * Tales of the Frog Princess: Once Upon A Curse: When Li'l leaves Handsome Lech Garrid because he lied to her. She was fully justified and Garrid comes across as unsympathetic... until he tells her, "I'd choose you if I could." Then, you realize Garrid has genuinely fallen for her, and is truly sorry for his actions. And then Emma describes how dejected he looked... Ouch.
 * Snow Flower and the Secret Fan when Lily reads the third day books, and also when
 * Alma Alexander's The Secrets of Jin Shei. When the princess died at the start, but by the end...
 * Any work of Chaim Potok's makes me want to cry and scream at the characters at the same time:
 * Reuven, the Nice Guy in The Chosen, loses his best friend (Danny) because of a political difference of opinion between his father's ideology and Danny's father's beliefs -- he spends a significant amount of time being alone, after a long period of being Danny's sole support, and this period leaves its mark on him. He spends the sequel, The Promise, as an emotional punching bag for a seriously troubled young boy, while Danny takes notes in a detached manner and ends up marrying the girl Reuven was seeing at the start of the book.
 * The real doozy though, is Asher in My Name Is Asher Lev / The Gift of Asher Lev. In the first book, he is neglected, mocked and bullied for his "unholy" talent for art. The Rebbe, the leader of the community, is an odd character who simultaneously helps Asher while making his life as difficult as possible. By the end of the novel, after creating a particularly inflammatory painting, Asher is exiled from his community. He makes a new life for himself in France, marries a woman that he loves, and has two children that he adores. Then he goes back to his parent's home. Expect to alternate between tears of rage and sorrow as you see Asher's parents slowly manipulate his wife and children away from Asher -- Asher realises it's happening, and wants to get back to France quickly to prevent it. However, his mother's guilt trips of "I want to see my grandchildren, how can you deny me the right to see them and my daughter-in-law?"/"Why not stay a little longer, you owe us that much after the pain and shame you brought on us", coupled with his wife's desire for a family and a community that she was denied (having lost her own in the Holocaust), sees him staying even as his hard-fought for familial bliss is dragged away from him. The final insult is when the aging Rebbe decides he wants Asher's father to be his successor...and in order to create a stable dynasty, he needs Asher's son as well. The book ends as . The only "compensation" is that the repeated emotional abuse fuels his art. And the kicker is, Asher honestly believes that he is an unholy person who deserves everything he gets, especially due to Muse Abuse. Commence howling.
 * Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens, has so many of these. If it's not as she holds a very young Florence, it's  and his accompanying descriptions of it.

"The moon in the bureau mirror
 * In Knit the Season, flashbacks show bits of Georgia's life through her perspective before . One of them shows her lying on the floor with her tweenage daughter Dakota, who is sad that Christmas has to end. If it wasn't enough of a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming with Georgia fully appreciating her growing daughter's cuddling with her though she will soon be too old to want to, and her telling Dakota that "now our perfect Christmas never has to end", it becomes full-on Tear Jerker when you know from the first book in the series that
 * This poem, Insomnia, by Elizabeth Bishop:

looks out a million miles

(and perhaps with pride, at herself,

but she never, never smiles)

far and away beyond sleep, or

perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,

she'd tell it to go to hell,

and she'd find a body of water,

or a mirror, on which to dwell.

So wrap up care in a cobweb

and drop it down the well

into that world inverted

where left is always right,

where the shadows are really the body,

where we stay awake all night,

where the heavens are shallow as the sea

is now deep, and you love me."

"Valya: Sometimes I believe that the bullet that killed my father also got lodged in my heart..."
 * The part in Needful Things when Sheriff Pangborn visits Sean Rusk in the hospital . Like most Stephen King novels, there's usually at least one or two moments of heart-wrenching sadness, and this fits the bill nicely.
 * The opening of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime always gets me, as well as other parts of the story.
 * Magpie Island by Colin Thiele always makes me tear up if not cry openly. If you don't know what I'm talking about it's a short book, read it.
 * Robert E Howard didn't write a lot of Tear Jerkers, but the finale of "Queen of the Black Coast," where Conan sees off perhaps the greatest love he's ever known in true Viking fashion, brought many a Manly Tears to the eyes of readers.
 * The Thief Lord, the moment Prosper realizes that Bo has been kidnapped.
 * Octavia E. Butler's Kindred. When Rufus wavers between good and being a complete bastard, when Kevin gets left behind in the past and she sees him again, when Alice ...
 * In Julia's Kitchen, by Brenda A Ferber, Cara's sister has just died. Both always used to want to sit in a certain chair. "But now as I curled up in the chair, it seemed so big. Big enough to share."
 * Taggle's  in Plain Kate was heart rending. over a CAT! yes, a talking cat, but still. although the circumstances no doubt didn't help ...
 * Hand if Isis, by Jo Graham. The second half loves punching you in the gut, from Isis revealing  to the tomb scene   It makes the whole scene work, especially given Arsinoe's fate earlier in the book and the fact that the sisters know it will happen to them. Topping it all off is that Charmain is so broken throughout the Amenti scenes that she refuses to believe that she- didn't fail and begs to be punished. And then Isis Invictus... poor  . He wants so badly to make amends, and.
 * In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. When Dame Philippa describes the tragic death of
 * Pilgrimage: The Book of the People, by Zenna Henderson. Esther's horrific racial memory, explaining why she and everyone in Bendo "keep their feet on the ground."
 * I Know This Much Is True. Dominick has spent most of the last section of the novel simply trying to see his hospitalized schizophrenic twin. The moment when he walks into the visiting room is a huge moment of triumph for him. His brother Thomas comes out and they begin talking. Thomas begins to ramble off nonsense, not really aware of the situation they are in. Dominick disobeys the no-touching rule to hug Thomas - who is all the while still babbling paranoid gibberish. The true desperation of Thomas' insanity sets in.
 * "The Guy with the Eyes" from Spider Robinson's Literature/Callahan'sCrosstimeSaloon has the saddest line ever, considering the line that comes before it:  I saved thirty dollars, easy..." The power of context.
 * Dorothy Koomson's "Goodnight, Beautiful" is absolutely full of them, right until the final page. Just in case the doomed love story doesn't get you, or you outlast Nova's farewell to, the book ends with said farewell being repeated... Tissues, please.
 * The Passage, by Justin Cronin. There are plenty of Tearjerker moments, but the story of Dr Jonas Lear is especially sad. A man, a scientist, who travelled the world trying to find a way to 'cure' death, to prevent the loss he suffered when his wife died. He doesn't even seem to consider that his own life has value, believing he has nothing to live for if he can't unravel the mystery of death. And then this man, this gentle determined man...ends the world. He becomes responsible for the deaths of millions, completely by accident. He only wanted to help, and by the end he's known as 'the saddest man in the world'. There's also Sara and Michael Fisher, who had to grow up alone after their parents hung themselves. And Olsen Hand, a Wasteland Elder who feels the burden of having to sacrifice people to Babcock so that the others may be spared, and when he tries to fix things, his daughter is killed. He ends up just wandering into the distance, toward his certain death.
 * The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein. Especially the end when
 * Oblomov's
 * In the Farscape tie-in novel House of Cards,
 * Eric Flint's 1632: The death and discovery of the body of George Blanton.
 * The Kane Chronicles: Think about this.
 * Cleveland Amory's Animail quoted a portion of an Albert Payson Terhune story called "The Christmas Pup." After the titular puppy nipped a child who'd just pulled its tail, the father
 * Miriam Allen deFord's story "A Death in the Family" managed to combine tearjerking with a touch of horror, being about a mortician who dealt with his lifelong loneliness by constructing a "fake family" from  When his "family" was in danger of discovery thanks to his decision to , he destroyed it by
 * "They are all dead. Everybody is dead. Tanya is left alone". This is the last entry of Tanya Savicheva, a 10 years old girl who lived with her family during the siege of Leningrad. With supply lines cut, food shortage became more and more deadly. Her entire family died one by one, leaving only Tanya behind.
 * Yurij Jakovlev (a Russian writer) has book called Passion of the Four Girls which is about his musings on the fate of four girls who died young: Anne Frank (who kept a diary during WWII, see above), Tanya Savicheva (who lived in Leningrad during the siege, also see above), Sadako Sasaki ("Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes") and Samatha Smith (who has taken up contact with Gorbachev and died in a plane crash shortly thereafter). The book is especially sad when it starts to intermingle their stories (especially the first three), making a picture of endless suffering that was WW 2.
 * The Commander's Daughter, Another story by Y. Jakovlev, deals with the siege of the Brest Fortress in 1941, as seen by the titular heroine, a 14-years-old girl called Valya. The first Tear Jerker comes at the beginning:
 * The Commander's Daughter, Another story by Y. Jakovlev, deals with the siege of the Brest Fortress in 1941, as seen by the titular heroine, a 14-years-old girl called Valya. The first Tear Jerker comes at the beginning:


 * Then later we see her male friends, Dima and Vitja, killed during battle
 * And in the end, when Valya together with the soldiers, sings a song about those who diesd in battle, while preparing for an enemy assault they know they cannot repel...
 * Laura und der Silberwolf (Laura and the Siver Wolf) By A Michaelis. The last chapter is named "Chapter 15, in which adults may need a handckerchief...", and boy does the name fit -
 * Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. It recounts a young boy being taken care of by his mother, and eventually his mother is taken care of by him.
 * "The Secret Life of Bees". The part where the tender, sweetBroken Bird May kills herself by going out in the river and putting a rock on her chest and drowns herself. Then there's this one scene where it looks like she's going to LIVE, and then it was just their imagination. More tears.....
 * If you`re german, you`ve probably read the short story "Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch" (''But The Rats Are Sleeping At Night) by Wolfgang Borchert in class. The story is about a boy, who lost his younger brother during a bombing in World War 2. He is keeping guard at the place his brother was buried under the debris and refuses to leave, because he wants to protect his brother`s body from being eaten by rats. The story ends in a Hope Spot, as a man manages to persuade the boy to leave the place at sun set and helps him to come to terms with his grief, but before it, you have to get through two pages of relentless post-war depression. It gets worse when you realize that, even though it was a fictional story, it is extremely realistic and a similar incident could have happend in one of the big cities in WW 2.