Books That Make You Cry: Philosophy Forums

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Books That Make You Cry

Deej
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Posted 03/27/08 - 10:06 AM: Subject: Books That Make You Cry	#1
It may be cheesy, but I remember crying when I first read the Hobbit. I was about ten or eleven and the ending when a lot of the heroes die made me really really sad. I think it was the first time I knew that major characters could die, and since everyone I knew was a major character in my life it informed my young brain about mortality. -Deej

Matt C
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Posted 05/06/08 - 08:05 PM:	#2
Shiloh made me cry: an abused dog rescued by a young boy. Not really. I've never cried about a story...well maybe a tear from laughter. For the arts, many of my tears are for operas. The theme of well liked characters dieing is quite common. I just do not cry for such stories. I did almost cry during the movie Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack I think, sank into the water. Edited by MatthewbCurry on 05/06/08 - 08:12 PM. Reason: Desired to add content.

quickly
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Posted 05/07/08 - 05:20 AM:	#3
Not cry, but brought me to a point of utter, affirmative, laughter (of the silent kind), amidst their (the character's) despair. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, for instance. The scene where the main character and her transient aunt burn down their house, where the main character loses herself (in every possible sense) in the dark, dreaming of children inhabiting an abandoned house, only to affirm herself at the end, was a powerful moment. The kind which is so captivating you feel captivated by something deeper than the emotion to cry, because you can't cry, but you can't laugh, only remain silent. The last sections of James Joyce's Ulysses had the same effect. Same with W. B. Yeats, and a few others. I always found it kind of useless to cry during a novel. Those parts in which a person wishes to cry, I found after a while, are the places the reader needs to focus most intently, until they've discovered every reason they did, until they've deciphered the book until it becomes impossible to cry because they're outside of themselves, knowing why another would.
Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura quae legis hic; aliter non fit philosophyforums.com (cf., Martial, Epigrammata I.XVI)

Benkei
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Posted 05/07/08 - 06:21 AM:	#4
Hmmm... I cried when all the superheroes died fighting Onslaught in the Marvel Universe. It was horrible!
Obama is humping the pump in an effort to re-inflate an economy that looks more like a balloon with a 55 caliber bullet hole in it. - Joe Bageant

quickly
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Posted 05/07/08 - 06:36 AM:	#5
No way! It was when fucking Batman died. Batman doesn't die...Heresy
Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura quae legis hic; aliter non fit philosophyforums.com (cf., Martial, Epigrammata I.XVI)

Benkei
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Posted 05/08/08 - 03:33 AM:	#6
OMFG! Batman died?!
Obama is humping the pump in an effort to re-inflate an economy that looks more like a balloon with a 55 caliber bullet hole in it. - Joe Bageant

Seperaii
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Posted 05/08/08 - 01:00 PM:	#7
"Private Peacefull" - Micheal Morpurgo I first read it when I was about 8, and it made me cry then. I read it for the Insert rather large number here-th time last week, and it still bought the same result. I don't know why I like it so much, I can't really relate to any of the characters, but it does. If you havn't read it, I suggest that you do. Right now. Go and buy it. Then read it.

jdrw
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Posted 05/08/08 - 05:34 PM:	#8
As I recall, A Woman in Amber a memoir of a little girl's survival of WW II in Latvia made me sob. And The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, too. And also I wept over the sales figures for the Left Behind series and was depressed for weeks. And of course there's always Hegel. Hegel has brought tears to many people's eyes. Cheers. jd
OTOH I might be exhaustively wrong about everything I've ever thought--with the possible exception of this sentence.

7
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Posted 05/08/08 - 11:03 PM:	#9
I have never cried due to the content of a book, but I have laughed many times.

Benkei
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Posted 05/08/08 - 11:43 PM:	#10
Well, to be serious, I have gone misty-eyed with quite a few passages in various books. I even had it with the uplifting words in Plato's Politea: with our feet on the upward path all shall be well. As a barren quote it doesn't work of course but within the context it opened up the realisation that human greatness is a journey and one we need not walk alone. For some reason the contextual metaphor struck me emotionally in those last few pages. In any case, I am very sensitive to strong descriptions of friendship, love and honour, whereas violence just doesn't resonate with me whether in written or graphic form - I felt nothing during the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan but was dumbstruck into reverent silence seeing the graves in real life of all those soldiers that died there; rows upon rows of white crosses.
Obama is humping the pump in an effort to re-inflate an economy that looks more like a balloon with a 55 caliber bullet hole in it. - Joe Bageant

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