Scenes from books that you remember years later.

[Jim_n_NYC]

I don't know what made me think of this, but probably just reading some of other threads made this come to mind.  Do you have scenes from books that stick with you?  I have three off the top of my head...

*spoilers...maybe :)*

1) this one is the most vivid for me.  I read 'Anna Karenina' at least 30 years ago.  When she throws herself on the train tracks at the end and (this is from memory, I should check to see how accurate I am) just as the train gets to her she comes out of her stupor and realizes what she is doing and wants to get up.  But as she tries to get up she feels a heavy weight pressing her down and she can't get up.  Just that description of being run over by a train...yikes.

2) Sydney Carton going to the Guillotine in 'Tale of Two Cities'

3) I don't remember this part exactly, but in James Michener's 'The Drifters' there's a draft dodger who is tracked down to Mozambique and he gets (pays for?) help to avoid being taken back.  Little Casino and Big Casino are the code names and I don't remember which this is, but one involved him getting his pic taken as he sucks on a big, burly Arabic guy's cock.  I read this in high school.  Amazing my mother at the time (in the late 70's no less) gave me that book to read.

[TonyDown]

1.  Last of the Wine

(Spoiler)

How Alexias realizes a dead soldier being carried away was his lover Lysis.  Devastating, poignant writing.  Before battle, Lysis was worried one of Alexias sandals needed repair.  Though the dead body being carried was covered, "the feet were showing beneath the cloak and one of the sandals was mended."  The reader then knows Lysis must have traded sandals with his young love Alexias, and had died in battle.

2.  A Boy's Own Story

It begins with a late night boat ride with his dad on the lake in Michigan.  Hemingway-like.  There were other memorable scenes, e.g. Stonewall, in the Edmund Trilogy but this is the one I think of.

3.  Giovanni's Room

Near the beginning.  It's morning. David and Joey are naked, in bed.  David watches beautiful young, innocent Joey sleeping.  David gets up and leaves.  I always think how the sweet Joey had dodged a bullet, to be rid of David.

[Bokomaru]

In one of Ed White’s books (Farewell Symphony?) there’s a great scene where Ed’s roommate/bf, a struggling stage actor who is escorting because he needs the money, encounters Tennessee Williams as a client. He is tempted to gush about how much joy and inspiration Mr Williams has provided to him, but instead he tells the client to get down on his knees and start groveling. Very amusing, if not all that surprising.