When did you cry?

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I believe no one has this far mentioned the scene that definitely made me cry. Maybe there were others, I'm not sure, but this one I remember: Thorin's death in the Hobbit. When Bilbo awakens, Gandalf greets him and is happy and then he leads him to Thorin. "Hail, Thorin! I have brought him." And then Thorin's speech. Oh my, I just now started to cry! I had to check the exact words, opened the book and look what happened! That settles it, I am not going to check anything else... *walks away, sobbing*

Interesting you should mention that, Legate. That scene is the only one I can recall crying at– I don't just mean in Tolkien's work, I mean at all. I think it must have been the first story I had encountered where a major character dies (I was about five).

[Aganzir]

Lommy, I almost started crying while reading that on the screen. It's definitely one of the saddest and most beautiful phrases ever.

I'm not a sentimental person (at least I didn't use to be), but there are so many things that make me cry in Tolkien's works that I don't even remember them all. Some parts fill me with almost unbearable joy ("Rohan had come at last", "Thus came Aragorn son of Arathorn, Elessar, Isildur's heir, out of the Paths of the Dead, borne upon a wind from the Sea to the kingdom of Gondor..." etc.), some make me cry every time I read them. Many poems & songs, for example, and the endings of both the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. I remember weeping uncontrollably for the last pages almost every time I've read them. They're just too beautiful.

Almost twenty years ago a Finnish theatre group recorded some songs from the Lord of the Rings, and a few years ago I borrowed the cd from Lommy. All of the singers don't sound very good (ie. don't resemble the "original" singers), but many of the songs themselves are quite beautiful. One night I listened to the song of the Ent and the Entwife on repeat probably ten times and cried all the time just because it was so sad.

However, there's still one no one has mentioned: The Leaf by Niggle. I cry every single time I read it (and admit doing something like Lommy: reading it just to make me cry). Last time I almost started crying in a bus, and that wouldn't have been too nice.