YMMV / Voices After Midnight

• Heartwarming Moments:
  • It crosses with a Tear Jerker, but Mamie's message on the wreath she lays on Tyler and Emily's graves.
    MY DEAREST FRIENDS
    GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
    BY ONE YOU LEAVE BEHIND
  • Mrs. Dunlap's reply to her husband when he tells her Mr. Tiffany (yes, that Tiffany) assisted him in selecting the design for the pin he gives her for Christmas: "You require no assistance, Jeremiah. Your taste is impeccable."
  • Mamie establishing the Hunter College School of Social Work, raising every penny herself, to be a true friend to the poor. For that matter, Consuelo Ebersole endowed the school with $14 million, showing that a) she wasn't as much of a Rich Bitch as she seemed and b) if she knew of the possibility of Mamie and Tyler becoming an item, she held no grudges against her for it.
  • Just the fact that Pegeen, whom Mrs. Dunlap called "one of us" that they would always do their best by, ended up marrying Tyler. Apparently being as slow as molasses also translated to "slow and steady wins the race". And she got to raise a big family with a firm hand, and a daughter as feisty as she was. Something which seems to run in the family, to judge by Heidi at least.
  • Chad's final image of Emily, when he's dreaming on the plane flight home to California:
    She was standing in a garden with everything in bloom. Shading her face was a big old straw gardening hat she'd probably had for years. On her arm was a basket of flowers. It was a warm day in England or someplace like it under a deep blue sky. She was just there for a moment. Then she was gone.
• Nightmare Fuel: Literally, in the case of Chad's Masquerade Ball dream.
  The rest of the room faded, and Consuelo was lowering her mask. I opened my mouth to scream. My hands came up, Tyler's did, trying to cover my eyes.
  Behind Consuelo's mask was a skull scoured of all flesh. No, it was worse than that. It was a skull turned brown by time and stained by the graveyard years. I looked around me, and everybody in the fading ballroom was like her. All their masks were lowered now, and skulls stared at me because all of these people were dead, long dead. And I had no business being here. The sockets of their empty eyes were deep black tunnels where I heard screams echoing into eternity.
• Tear Jerker:
  • All of Tyler and Emily's conversations that the kids hear as echoes of the past are quite sad, with their references to longing for warm summer days in the park and to not give up hope, but hands down the dream scene in the cemetery when Chad finds their graves and sees what is written on them (and the mourners' wreaths) is heartbreaking. It's also an in-story example, since Chad finds himself crying, and there are still tears on his cheeks when he wakes up.
    Luke: I think that was our last warning. I hated those graves, didn't you?
  • Also, the scene when the boys actually find Tyler and Emily.
    Tyler had fallen across her. At the last he'd tried to get his coat off to put around her. It was pulled off his shoulders. But the cold had caught up with him, and the fear, and being caged in this frozen house. The two of them were like statues carved on a tomb, cold and still. They'd hung here trapped in their last hours as the storm of their century tore through the house. The electricity had gone out and caught them here together. They'd waited to be saved, down through the years, till only their voices echoed. Finally, we'd heard.
• Values Dissonance:
  • At one point, when Emily is in full-on The Matchmaker mode in trying to get her brother hooked up with Mamie, her best friend ruefully notes, "I'm not sure where what you want for me ends and where what I want for me begins." To which Emily blinks and says, "Don't be so intellectual, Mamie. Men don't like it." Considering she reads John Greenleaf Whittier, this seems less like her genuine feelings on the matter and more a warning to Mamie to be careful, or possibly even a joke (she had earlier also remarked to her about men never growing up). Either way, it's a clear reference to the state of women's rights and relations between the genders of the time, particularly among the well-off.
  • When the boys discover the poor homeless people living in the trench in Central Park, Chad is horrified and Luke saddened but understanding of the period. Later, when they witness Emily telling Mrs. Dunlap about it, the latter notes that "we cannot feed all of Ireland. We do what we can, but we cannot change the world, or even the city of New York." However...
• Values Resonance: ...note how furious Emily is by the poor people's conditions, how they "have to live...down in that desperate hole, and the children blue with" cold. Considering how the homeless, and the conditions they live in, are unfortunately still an issue even today, Emily's determination to change things is very welcome. Also note Whittier, and the specific book of his she was reading, was a noted abolitionist.