Sad endings

Niiicola

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I'm piggybacking on the other thread about subjects that are potentially too depressing for YA. Sage had a great comment that sad endings need an element of hope, and I'm just wondering, what else do you guys think are the elements of a good, sad ending? It has to be done just right so the reader doesn't feel cheated, and I feel like there's a really delicate balance between light/dark that has to be struck.

Without getting too spoilery, what are your favorite books with sad endings, and why do you think they're so effective?
 

Sage

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I'm not sure how we're going to not be spoilery here ;)
 

Underdawg47

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I loved "The Road". When the father died it was terribly sad, but there was a glimmer of hope when the boy met up with that family at the end.
 

Gringa

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Interesting question. I'm near the end of a book and have purposely put off the ending for this very reason. Just thinking of how it might end saddens me.

I'm not going to mention the title. It's a well known book and I don't want to know...
 

thisprovinciallife

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I think hope is not always necessary, but acceptance is. Sometimes those go hand in hand, but sometimes they're different. I think the MC needs to accept the sad ending, and that way the reader can, too.

I loved We Were Liars even though I didn't think it had a hopeful ending (spoilers coming in white). The whole book was a sad story about a dysfunctional family, and in the end, she realized her friends had died (and the dogs!) and she could have saved them. It was so depressing, and tbh, I don't have a lot of hope for that family and the life they led. But, she accepted the terrible truth of what had happened, and she let her friends go, and she decided to keep on keepin' on. And that decision to push forward made me feel satisfied with the ending, even though I was still really sad.
 

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Or I could just skip the rest of the thread. After all, just by naming a book in here, you tell me whether there's going to be a sad ending. If you white out the name, what's the point of talking about it at all? (I've seriously never understood whiting out a title) So it falls on the reader--aka me, in this case--to decide to skip the thread of probable spoilers
 

casualrungal

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I am SUCH a sucker for sad endings. I don't even need hope, really!

I'm trying to think of some of my favorite sad YA endings, but nothing's coming to mind besides Mockingjay. Maybe YA authors feel more of a need to add a trace of hope/lightness/redemption at the end of a story? Because I can think of loads of sad endings in adult fiction. On the other hand, maybe the adult titles I'm thinking of end on a note that's more bleak than outright sad... I'm thinking specifically of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go or Remains of the Day (or maybe anything he's written, come to think of it), because he's the first author that comes to mind for me when I think of sad endings. Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles ended in a really sad way, too, I thought. Oh gosh, and the sad ending to end all sad endings: On The Beach, by Nevil Shute. I guess it makes sense that the super heavy endings would be mainly in adult fiction. Even in the case of my own writing, there tends to be some sweet to go along with all the bitter.

I can already tell I'll be stalking this thread for book suggestions!
 
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Becca C.

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I always think of George Orwell when I think of sad endings. 1984 and ANIMAL FARM both had endings that just upset me. Teenage me shook the books and yelled "WHY EVEN BOTHER IF THE BAD GUYS ARE JUST GOING TO WIN EVERYTHING EVER."

I can get behind a sad ending if it suits the book. Bittersweet is my favourite flavour though.
 

Ravioli

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The true story of Shir Khan, told by Gert Haucke; a rescued tiger cub who was murdered by police when he tried to run back to his daddy who had had him perfectly under control. While horribly heartbreaking - there where photos of that guy's life with his stumpy-tailed tiger - it was so poetic and so final, and also reminded you who the real monsters were. Not a tiger who just plays rough. Police had caught and killed him because they had gotten word of the tiger sending his owner's stepmom to the hospital but the lady had been laughing about it, because, SHE WAS FINE and they killed the tiger anyway. After all the hard work saving his life as a baby and raising him to be as sweet as a labrador.

I think a sad ending can be great if it, rather than just bumming the reader, rips their heart out, smashes it into the ground, jumps on it, peels it back off, eats it chewing 20 times, swallows it, poops it back out, and flushes. While making the reader watch.
It's what I'm aiming for. A glimmer-of-hope-sad-ending can be great, but I'd rather just crush the reader and destroy all they love mwahaha.
 

Parataxis

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I am having trouble defining a sad ending. If the heroes Win, but at a great cost, is it sad? If they won the battle but the war rages on, is it said? In some cases, yes. Others no.

I say this because I really don't tend to like endings where everything is awful--where the hero dies, their mission unfulfilled. And yet, I am really drawn to poignant endings. Endings where the future is scary and everything is going to be different now. Endings where for the world it's a victory but for the heroes the cost was massive. A lot of times these endings are called bittersweet though rather than actually sad. Even if the tone of the ending is quite downbeat.

The Original Hunger Games book is a really excellent example of this, and one of the reasons I really think of it as a great book. The ending leaves you with Katniss's regret and uncertainty as she steps back out into the world. I would be interested if people thought of that as a "sad" ending.
 

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For me a sad ending always has some element of continuation to it. The sadness/depressing aspect may be for the main character, but the other characters also have to deal with what has happened. If the main character dies then the others must carry on without them. I once heard someone say regarding suicide, if you are going through an awful time in your life then your story is not done, because in the end it will always get better. This is why it is so hard to write a story in which the bad guys win. In our hearts we want some notion that the good guys will be able to turn the tide in the end.
For a novel I think you need to provide the reader some sense of how the story might proceed after the actual novel is complete. It doesn't need to be cherry and blissful, but it should give them a notion that life continues for those characters.
 

lenore_x

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I'm with Becca. Bittersweet! Bittersweet! Bittersweet! (Or just straight up happy, honestly. I never begrudge HEA.)

That said, I'm a horror fan, and most (adult) horror has sad, disturbing, and/or hopeless endings. It follows naturally from the themes. I think this is a reason why horror has struggled to get a foothold in YA, although from what I hear, that's changing. I hope we don't start to see a slew of YA horror with hopeful endings shoehorned in, though.

I can't think of many sad YA endings I've read, but I can think of bleak ones. Living Dead Girl, anyone? Oh sure, you can argue that the last sentence was optimistic, but I'm not buying that!
 

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Susan Beth Pfeiffer's last survivors series...each one ends with only the faintest hope that things will get better in the future. Though it's the second book in that series that really gets me. But then again you don't expect sunshine and love lollipops from a book titled The Dead and the Gone.
 

The_Ink_Goddess

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I always think of George Orwell when I think of sad endings. 1984 and ANIMAL FARM both had endings that just upset me. Teenage me shook the books and yelled "WHY EVEN BOTHER IF THE BAD GUYS ARE JUST GOING TO WIN EVERYTHING EVER."

I can get behind a sad ending if it suits the book. Bittersweet is my favourite flavour though.

I love 1984's ending (I think it might actually be my favourite of all time). It's horrifying, disturbing, and unforgettable - but what really makes it for me is that it completely and utterly fits the mood of the novel. I think, if an ending is going to be as bleak as that, it has to say something. 1984 would probably not have had 50% of the impact it did on me if Winston had died. To me, what makes that ending truly great is what it says about dystopia - how utterly horrific, unforgiving, and impossible it is.

I hate endings where I'm "supposed" to cry. I've avoided The Fault In Our Stars for that reason. I thought B£F0RE I D1E (a YA contemporary about a girl dying of terminal cancer) was totally exploitative and manipulative rather than resonant and emotional. That's probably my fault.

I can get behind a sad ending, though, but it needs to be two things: conclusive and fitting. Seriously. I have been baffled for something like ten years over an ending to a UK psychological thriller called Sophie, about a guy who abducts his older sister because he wants answers about his disturbing childhood - turns out she's not his sister, he's a serial killer. (Great twist.) He tricks her into thinking he's going to let her go and then he imprisons her in an underground quarry cage thing to die, where she sees the corpse of his 'real' sister and all his other victims but the most frustrating thing is how it ends on a note of "I'll guess we'll never know the real story." No! I don't care how depressing the real story is, but I want to know it!
 

lenore_x

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I hate endings where I'm "supposed" to cry. I've avoided The Fault In Our Stars for that reason. I thought B£F0RE I D1E (a YA contemporary about a girl dying of terminal cancer) was totally exploitative and manipulative rather than resonant and emotional. That's probably my fault.

That's how I felt about 1F I ST@Y. I felt very manipulated by the tragedy set up in contrast to the MC's super perfect adorable life. Didn't feel authentic to me at all. (Don't hate me! I know that book's beloved 'round these parts. :))
 

Niiicola

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Yeah, I'm with you guys. I haven't read either of those books because they feel almost like emotional porn or something. However, that's probably more due to all the buzz about how everybody cried over them than the fault of the books themselves.
 

Becca C.

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I love 1984's ending (I think it might actually be my favourite of all time). It's horrifying, disturbing, and unforgettable - but what really makes it for me is that it completely and utterly fits the mood of the novel. I think, if an ending is going to be as bleak as that, it has to say something. 1984 would probably not have had 50% of the impact it did on me if Winston had died. To me, what makes that ending truly great is what it says about dystopia - how utterly horrific, unforgiving, and impossible it is.

I agree that it's a great ending! It's the most realistic ending there could have been -- imagine if Winston had somehow toppled the regime and saved the day? That would have been soooooo lame :p

As far as IF I STAY and TFIOS go (haven't read BEFORE I DIE), I don't know... I loved IIS, and its non-ending. I loved how you only really understood the end of that story in WHERE SHE WENT. And TFIOS, I must be really dumb because I didn't foresee the twist in that book and it hit me straight in the feels :p I'm a sucker for sentimental stuff like that. I find it nice and cathartic.
 

eyeblink

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I hate endings where I'm "supposed" to cry. I've avoided The Fault In Our Stars for that reason. I thought B£F0RE I D1E (a YA contemporary about a girl dying of terminal cancer) was totally exploitative and manipulative rather than resonant and emotional. That's probably my fault.

Agreed, Beth, though we're going to have to agree to disagree about Before I Die.

All storytelling is manipulation, but if I sense that I am being overtly manipulated, I stay dry-eyed. I guess it depends how well the manipulation is done, and obviously everyone's mileage will vary. I haven't read the book of The Fault in Our Stars but the film left me unmoved. On the other hand, I read Before I Die in a day and was in a very fragile state for several days afterwards - and the film version (called Now is Good) had me with something in my eye.

The book which unfailingly makes me cry isn't a YA but shouldn't be beyond the reach of teenage readers - it's Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. And that's one reason why it's one of my favourite novels.

*goes away to sob in a corner*
 

Fuchsia Groan

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I did foresee the end of TFiOS, and I'm hardhearted and hardly ever cry where I'm supposed to, and it still totally wrecked me! I think that book was ingeniously designed to make cynics fall apart.

And yet, when I remember it, I don't think "sad ending" or "God, that was so horribly depressing." I think that's because the ending affirms the humanity of the characters and the notion that YES, we all matter even if we're headed for oblivion. Sad things happen, but the essential problem posed at the beginning of the book -- does anything matter? -- has been solved with that affirmation. For me that's still a happy ending. Sort of.

Contrast that to a book that ends with absolutely NO affirmation that the MC and his/her choices mattered. I can't even think of a YA example. In the adult realm, pretty much anything by Flaubert, and much of the horror genre.

I do remember being stunned by the bleakness of Z for Zachariah when I was a kid, but now I honestly can't remember how it ended. The middle was depressing enough. :)

Also, the ending of House of Stairs by William Sleator. I don't think it was a particularly bad ending for the MC, but it was dark and ironic and did not exactly affirm the primacy of free will. That's how you do dystopian endings, in my mind, but it might not fly in current YA.
 

Niiicola

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For me the worst ones are the ones where you keep thinking there's somehow going to be a way out of the terrible ending you've already been told is coming. The Time Traveler's Wife and Before I Fall just killed me for that reason. They both ultimately ended on a hopeful note, which was needed, but I did a lot of crying before I got to the hopeful part. I'm getting sappy in my old age. But I really like sad endings. I guess I like crying? (no I don't)

Fuchsia, I totally agree with you on dystopian endings. It always feels a little silly to me when they're suddenly fixed through the actions of a small band of idealistic teen rebels, perhaps with the help of a few grownups.
 
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thisprovinciallife

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I did foresee the end of TFiOS, and I'm hardhearted and hardly ever cry where I'm supposed to, and it still totally wrecked me! I think that book was ingeniously designed to make cynics fall apart.

And yet, when I remember it, I don't think "sad ending" or "God, that was so horribly depressing." I think that's because the ending affirms the humanity of the characters and the notion that YES, we all matter even if we're headed for oblivion. Sad things happen, but the essential problem posed at the beginning of the book -- does anything matter? -- has been solved with that affirmation. For me that's still a happy ending. Sort of.

Agree. I predicted the ending, and still totally bawled. I think you're right, that the book was really about heading for oblivion, and so the ending was semi-hopeful.

Did you read about the original ending he wrote for TFiOS? Hazel and the author of An Imperial Affliction (can't remember his name) go try to kill a drug lord so they can sacrifice themselves for something important (like August would have wanted).

I actually think that would have been awesome. It would have been consistent with the book's themes, and I think it would have made me feel less like this was a book written solely to manipulate emotions.
 

Niiicola

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Oh, and while we're on the subject, I would like to propose a ban on any more authors killing dogs as a cheap device to make us upset. It's gotten to the point where every time I read a book with a dog, I'm like "Nice knowing you, dog. Sorry."
 

Moonchild

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Oh, and while we're on the subject, I would like to propose a ban on any more authors killing dogs as a cheap device to make us upset. It's gotten to the point where every time I read a book with a dog, I'm like "Nice knowing you, dog. Sorry."

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE!!! These days, any time I read a blurb that even mentions a dog, I don't even bother with the book. (Funny how authors killing off human characters doesn't bother me as much... Huh.)

But as far as sad-but-satisfying-and-somewhat-hopeful endings, how about HIS DARK MATERIALS? I've read the trilogy about three times and the end of THE AMBER SPYGLASS still kills me a little every time :cry:. And yet, I couldn't imagine the story ending any different way.

Personally, I'm a big fan not so much of "sad" endings, but of ambiguous endings, of those brilliant bits of subtlety in the last few pages that leave you wondering, just a tiny bit, where the characters really, truly go from here.
 
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SBibb

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But as far as sad-but-satisfying-and-somewhat-hopeful endings, how about HIS DARK MATERIALS? I've read the trilogy about three times and the end of THE AMBER SPYGLASS still kills me a little every time :cry:. And yet, I couldn't imagine the story ending any different way.

Seconding this. It has such a bittersweet ending. I think it's one of the first novels I remembering reading that made me all teary-eyed. But I still absolutely enjoyed the trilogy. (Actually, it's one of the few series I've read more than once).

But I agree. I think it depends all on the book, and yeah, there's a careful line that seems to make a sad ending work. Though, I don't think I've really read that many books with a truly sad ending. I may have been unintentionally avoiding them...