Bittersweet Ending/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] loves this trope; any endings that aren't bittersweet are almost always [[Downer Ending|downers]].

** ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': The good guys win. Aragorn takes his rightful place as king. Sauron is defeated permanently, and the Ring destroyed... but this also destroys the power of the Three Rings that has sustained Lothlorien and Rivendell, and the Elves leave. Frodo, unable to bear the weight of all he lost to save the world, leaves with them, as does Gandalf, and magic begins to go out of the world.

** ''The Third Book of Swords'', the conclusion to the earlier trilogy, also has a somewhat bittersweet ending. Yes, Vilkata is defeated, and Mark gets to be a prince, so it's a basically happy ending. But even though the gods were, frankly, [[Jerkass Gods|jerks]], it's still rather [[End of an Age|melancholy to see them die]]. And not every single one of them was evil; Aphrodite's death was particularly poignant, precisely because she had come to sympathize with mortals.

** The ending of the ''Empire Of The East'' trilogy, set in an earlier period in the same universe, is happy except for one key point: [[Big Good|Ardneh]] [[Thanatos Gambit|dies]].

* ''[[One Day]]'' ends with one protagonist picking up the pieces of their shattered life and moving on after the love of their life was killed, while keeping the memory of them as a couple alive.

* ''[[Number the Stars]]'': Ellen and the other Danish Jews escaped to safety, and after a [[Time Skip]] Denmark is liberated from the Nazis. However, {{spoiler|Peter}} dies and is buried in an unknown grave, instead of {{spoiler|with Lise}}. Also, Lise's death before the story becomes bittersweet once it's revealed that she was part of [[La Résistance]] and was actually run down by a Nazi car.

* Daniel Quinn's [[Ishmael]] ends with the titular teacher's death, but he had taught all that the narrator needed to know to save the world.