The Most Depressing Book You've Ever Read

[II2]

Porno, by Irvine Welsh.

Funny, but SO coal-black cynical and ruthless.

 

[DeadMix]

1984 depressed me so much I got sick to my stomach. So yeah.

I'd have to agree with 1984:

Spoiler

It's not just that our heroes lose. It's also that it's made clear the situation is nearly hopeless and, above all, the fact that Winston's betrayal denies him even a moral victory.

Brave New World

It's kind of similar to 1984, but focuses more on a breakdown of morality and a reliance on artificial "happiness."

Spoiler

and the good guy kills himself

Debatable. Apart from the fact that it's supposed to be dystopic fiction, I don't think they have much in common. In fact, I'd say that they're at opposite ends of the dystopia scale. 1984 is about a regime that is soul-crushingly evil to the point that suspension of disbelief is strained, and maintains its grip on the populace through the traditional methods of deprivation and fear. Brave New World is about a much nicer place where the population is pacified by means of trivial amusements and bred to be vapid and docile, but content. To illustrate: in Oceania, if you disobey the rules the best you can hope for is torture, brainwashing and death. In the World State, the worst our heroes are threatened with is being sent to Iceland. I know where I'd rather live. The fact that Brave New World's dystopia is less obviously evil makes it much more interesting. That said, I felt Huxley missed the mark a bit when he was building his dystopia - I don't consider it that bad. It's certainly better than the world we have now. John the Savage was certainly intended to be the hero, but to me he just came across as a close-minded idiot.

I'd agree that Brave New World is on the other end of the dystopia spectrum, but I wouldn't say that Huxley missed the mark. Although it's true, I wouldn't mind vacationing there.

 

[thenoblitt]

the house on mango street so depressing that i wasted so much time on this piece of shit book

 

[Ben Jamin]

Animal Farm. I liked Boxers spirit, then Napoleon sent him off to the glue factory.
1984 was depressive too. Actually... anything I´ve read by George Orwell is sad and I love all of it.

I thought you were me for a second.

Animal Farm for me.

 

[Zawinul]

So many!
The Will as Idea and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer;
A Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno;
The Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament;
The Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament;
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre;
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo;
almost anything by John Steinbeck, Sylvia Plath, and Virginia Woolf.

If I had to single out one book it would be Elie Wiesel's Night.

 

[Kuranesno7]

damn near all of the short stories in Burning Chrome, by Willam Gibson. All deal with betrayal, abandonment, or the inability to handle life.

 

[DementedSheep]

Little Angels. Its true stories of some of Thai novice monks. According to the blurb at the beginning he didn't even cherry pick them. They were picked at random (barring those who did not want to tell their story) and yet every one of them is terrible, the running theme being joining to escape extreme poverty.

2nd would probably be Hiroshima. I had to read it at school. Like the first book its just accounts of stuff that happened. It isn't really played up, they don't go on about the emotion it just states what happened but that is enough.
I swear the schooling system here (NZ) has an obsession with depressing real life account books. I read Anne Frank 3 times, Schindler's List/Arc, The Endless Steepe and another I can't remember the name of that was about a Jewish family attempted to reach Poland during WW2 I think. No, wait one wasn't real it was...To Kill a Mocking Bird *sigh*.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I don't know why people were so effected by 1984's ending. The story of 1984 itself was actually pretty bad - Orwell wanted you to understand his ideas much more than he wanted you to be entertained by a story(and it's a fucking good bundle of ideas that Orwell makes). Really, the book was Orwell's way of making everybody understand and read his ideas, and ending a pretty pittance story that way with only two main characters is not that depressing. Animal Farm was pretty much the same.

I can't take Orwell's stories seriously as works of fiction, I treat them instead like a giant parable.

For me, Of Mice and Men and any other of Steinbeck's books like The Grapes of Wrath and Tortilla Flat. I'm not crazy for the era that Steinbeck writes about, but his books are devastatingly unforgiving.

 

[soren7550]

What's with all these old threads being necro'd lately?

I find that several of these works already mentioned not sad, but endlessly boring.

anything by edgar allen poe

Not related, but what the hell is your avatar? Is it a Weasly twin with a ridiculous hat?

Anyway, the most depressing book ever is this monstrosity:

Fuck this book! I don't care what you are, young/old, black/white, soulful/soulless, this will make you cry big fat tears all day long.

 

[Dangit2019]

"The Road" - Cormac McCarthy. The story of man and his son's trek towards the coast in post-apocalyptic America. Absolutely grueling.

This fucker right here.

Dear God, if you're not prepared for that book, it can have you in tears on the first few pages.

 

[Shock and Awe]

For me, it has to be 1984 by George Orwell. It takes the proud place of the only book to ever nearly reduce me to tears with its' ending. It really leaves you feeling that there is no hope for the world.

I have to agree on 1984, off the top of my head its the most depressing thing I ever read. I didn't go all the way to tears(not on that book anyway) but it was really disheartening. I tried to figure out a way that someone could actually go all the way and overthrow Oceania but I couldn't find it. Even the ones that seemed plausible always ended with the other two countries eating it in it's weakened state.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Lovecraft's works. The idea that not only do we not understand the universe, but our tiny brains are in fact incapable of understanding it in any meaningful way, that our whole species is grist for the mill, dust beneath the feet of beings so ancient and callous it drives us crazy just to see them..... yeah.

Ice and Fire is pretty depressing. The good guys? Yeah, they lose. Then they die.

I read a book in high school about people in (Australia I think?) waiting to die slowly of radiation sickness after a massive nuclear exchange elsewhere on the globe. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do, the fallout was going to kill everyone eventually. It was called On The Beach if I recall correctly.

The Grapes of Wrath. Depressing as hell -- takes place in the Depression, after all -- and all the more depressing because that stuff actually happened. The Joads were fictional but their situation wasn't.

Frankenstein is right up there, or perhaps right down there is a better term. Mad science, crimes against god and nature, murder, loss, tragedy self-inflicted and otherwise.... at the end everyone is either miserable or dead.

 

[squeekenator]

The Amber Spyglass. Such a good series, such a sad ending.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Any book written by Gabriel García Márquez qualifies. Honorable mentions to Memorias de mis putas tristes and Cien años de soledad. I would join in with McCarthy's The Road but the ending's considerably more upbeat than Blood Meridian, where EVERYTHING turns crap.

 

[Little Woodsman]

So, out of all the books I've read, what is the most depressing to me? Frankenstein.

Honestly, many people pity the monster, but out of all the characters in Frankenstein, I feel the saddest for the good doctor. Most of the time Frankenstein is made out to be some cackling madman, but the original book gives him quite a different portrayal. Frankenstein isn't some madman, he's a brilliant and idealistic young mind. It isn't power that motivates Frankenstein, just a thirst for knowledge, a desire to change the world and do good... And then when he finally completes his project, he makes one mistake, one perfectly normal mistake: He is absolutely terrified of what he created. This leaves a monster out wandering the world that may very well be doing anything and he had no power to stop it.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Frankenstein

The fact that he slowly sees his world torn apart, his friends and family murdered in absolutely brutal ways, and the love of his life strangled to death on their honeymoon only pushes him farther and farther on the teetering edge of sanity, to the point where by the time we meet him he's already accepted the fact that he will die not soon after he deals with the monster. Rejecting the monster may have been stupid, but he had genuinely understandable reasons to do so.

I think that readers tend to sympathize with the 'monster' more than Victor because

Spoiler: spoilers for Frankenstein

they see the monster start from a
place of total innocence. Also, the monster tries-repeatedly-to make positive contact with normal people only to be rejected solely because of his appearance. It also struck me that Victor was initially less afraid of his creation than revolted/shocked by it. It came across almost as though he was simply rejecting his creation for being ugly. Now the book does go to some length to point out that the appearance of the creature was so disturbing that Victor was in a state of shock from seeing it, but with modern sensibilities that's difficult to understand/sympathize with. I suppose the point of the book that I found most depressing was that the monster-starting from a place of pure innocence is dragged down by the continual cruelty and rejection he suffers to commit horrible atrocities for the sake of revenge & forcing Victor to
create a companion for him.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

either "of mice and men" or "the grapes of wrath". Steinbeck just has a way with making bad stuff happen to good people.

[http://dragcave.net/view/jNC1]

From a meta point of view I'd agree with Grapes of Wrath because I consider it a poorly written piece of garbage.

From a story point of view? The Sun Also Rises.

 

[Ldude893]

Either 1984 or Or Mice and Men.

The Giver.

Spoiler

There's two sequels to that book, and in the third one it's revealed Jonas grows up to be the leader of a better community than the one he just left. Gabe (the baby) also survives, and sled they fled on is displayed in a small museum in the community. In the book, he acts as a mentor to the protagonist.

Not sure if that makes the society in the book any less depressing, but at least the protagonist survives.

 

[hermes]

"Barranca abajo", roughly translated as "downhill", its the story of a family that loses everything and has to survive in increasingly depressing situations. At the end, the protagonist

Spoiler

kills himself