The Emigrants/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The books:

  • The deaths of Anna, baby Eva, Arvid, Robert and Kristina.
  • Karl Oskar's reaction to Kristina's death.
    • It was also quite the Tear Jerker to realise that Kristina was everything to Karl Oskar yet he got to spend less than twenty years with her and dies at the age of 67. That's almost fifty years without her.
  • The way the book deals with the subject of leaving everyone you love and everything you've ever known behind. The portrayal of Kristina's homesickness is heartbreaking.
  • The details from Anna's death. Hearing her beg her parents to forgive her so that the pain will stop (and asking her father why it hurts so much to die) is gut-wrenching.

The Movie:

  • The way Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman play Kristina's death scene breaks the heart.
    • As does, for that matter, von Sydow's performance in the scene where Kristina is bleeding from every orifice due to scurvy.
    • Also during the crossing of the Atlantic, Fina Kajsa when they come to take her dead husband away.

The Musical:

  • Ljusa kvällar om våren (Bright Evenings in Springtime) where Kristina sings about how homesick she is.
  • Stanna (Stay).
  • Gold Can Turn To Sand.
  • Not to mention the ending.