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What is the saddest ending in American literature?

By YPB Team

Sixteen last pages, ranked by damage: some wreck a marriage, some a family, some a whole migration west.

  1. The Great Gatsby — ranked #11
    The Great Gatsby
    Fitzgerald's 1925 novel that ends with a funeral almost nobody attends and a green light nobody reaches.
    1000pts
  2. Beloved — ranked #22
    Beloved
    Toni Morrison's 1987 novel about slavery's aftermath, closing on a name that is barely remembered.
    952pts
  3. The Bell Jar — ranked #33
    The Bell Jar
    Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel of breakdown and recovery, ending on a door that could still swing either way.
    835pts
  4. The Grapes of Wrath — ranked #44
    The Grapes of Wrath
    Steinbeck's 1939 Dust Bowl epic that ends in a flooded boxcar with an act of desperate mercy.
    734pts
  5. Ethan Frome — ranked #55
    Ethan Frome
    Edith Wharton's 1911 New England tragedy whose ending traps three people in one house for decades.
    659pts
  6. The House of Mirth — ranked #66
    The House of Mirth
    Wharton's 1905 novel of New York society that ends with a word left unsaid over a deathbed.
    571pts
  7. Of Mice and Men — ranked #77
    Of Mice and Men
    Steinbeck's 1937 novella that closes with one friend making an impossible choice for another.
    571pts
  8. Revolutionary Road — ranked #88
    Revolutionary Road
    Richard Yates's 1961 suburban novel that ends with a neighbor quietly turning down his hearing aid.
    571pts
  9. Flowers for Algernon — ranked #99
    Flowers for Algernon
    Daniel Keyes's novel whose final journal entries record a mind slipping back to where it started.
    571pts
  10. For Whom the Bell Tolls — ranked #1010
    For Whom the Bell Tolls
    Hemingway's Spanish Civil War novel that leaves its hero alone on a hillside waiting for soldiers.
    467pts
  11. A Farewell to Arms — ranked #1111
    A Farewell to Arms
    Hemingway's 1929 war novel whose last pages leave its narrator walking back to the hotel in the rain.
    343pts
  12. Native Son — ranked #1212
    Native Son
    Richard Wright's 1940 novel that closes with a cell door and a handshake through the bars.
    343pts
  13. The Road — ranked #1313
    The Road
    Cormac McCarthy's 2006 post-apocalyptic novel that ends with a father's last conversation with his son.
    190pts
  14. Sophie's Choice — ranked #1414
    Sophie's Choice
    William Styron's 1979 novel that saves its unbearable revelation for the last act.
    190pts
  15. Tender Is the Night — ranked #1515
    Tender Is the Night
    Fitzgerald's 1934 novel that fades out with a brilliant man practicing medicine in small upstate towns.
    190pts
  16. The Sound and the Fury — ranked #1616
    The Sound and the Fury
    Faulkner's 1929 novel of a collapsing Southern family, ending on a wail that stops only when order is restored.
    190pts

#usa291#books87#classics474#fiction16#endings2

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