History TearJerker / FeetOfClay

* Vimes's TheReasonYouSuckSpeech "Those poor devils had nothing but their clay, and you bastards took away even ''that''..."

--> '''Vimes:''' Then it's something we're not seeing, damn it! People are ''dead,'' Captain! Mrs. Easy's ''dead!''
--> '''Carrot:''' Who, sir?
--> '''Vimes:''' You've never heard of her?
--> '''Carrot:''' Can't say that I have, sir. What did she use to do?
--> '''Vimes:''' Do? Nothing, I suppose. She just brought up nine kids in a couple of rooms you couldn't stretch out in and she sewed shirts for a tuppence an hour, every hour the bloody gods sent, and all she did was work and keep to herself and she is ''dead,'' Captain. And so's her grandson. Aged fourteen months. Because her granddaughter took them some grub from the palace! A bit of a treat for them! And d'you know what? Mildred thought I was going to arrest her for theft! At the damn funeral, for gods' sake! It's ''murder'' now. Not assassination, not politics, it's ''murder.''

--> '''Carrot:''' ...But what do you [golems] actually ''want?''\\

** Worse still is that Vimes is literally the only person outside their immediate social circle who knows and cares they've died so unjustly. Even Carrot -- who's supposed to know and love everyone in Ankh-Morpork -- did not know her.

** [[spoiler: This moment has strong undertones of AdultFear. Almost every parent has worried at one point or another if they're raising their child right, and whether the child will grow up to be a good person. The golems putting all the rules inside their creation's head is functionally no different from a parent trying to teach their child the right moral lessons. The golems find out the hard way that they can't force their "child" to be good by just caring hard enough, and that's heartbreaking.]]

* Angua gets into an debate with clay about the treatment of monsters, both inhuman (werewolves, vampires, trolls) and artificial beings (golems). Carrot is being equable and altruistic, but a frustrated Angua wishes that sometimes he would just be biased in favour of something even if it means being against something too, just so that Carrot would be a little more flawed and relatable.

* The story of Stoneface Vimes: a hard, but honest and good man in some very bad times, he overthrew and killed the last King of Ankh-Morpork, the King in question being a monster and a tyrant. But despite how evil the King was, Stoneface was betrayed and executed for killing the King without a trial (the lack of a trial being because the King was so evil, no judge was willing to preside). Hundreds of years later, the King in question is venerated ''in spite'' of his evil deeds being known, while Stoneface Vimes is reviled.

*** More with their savior. He decided he would free his fellow golems...by working hard, for days on end until he could afford to buy one and give it to itself. Then ''they'' would work hard, for days on end until they could afford one more. They would, without ruining anyone's day, breaking any laws or spilling a single drop of blood, become free... by their own hand.

** [[spoiler: this moment has strong undertones of AdultFear. Almost every parent has worried at one point or another if they're raising their child right, and whether the child will grow up to be a good person and behave right. The golems putting all the rules inside their creation's head is functionally no different from a parent trying to teach their child the right moral lessons. The golems find out the hard way that they can't force their "child" to be good by just caring hard enough, and that's heartbreaking.]]

* Poor Mildred Easy will be burdened for the rest of her life by the knowledge that something ''she'' brought home from the palace killed both her baby brother and her hard-working old grandmother. And she and they had done ''absolutely nothing'' to deserve such a fate.

* [[spoiler: The golems were so desperate for freedom that they tried to make their own leader. They wanted him to be so perfect that they filled him with so many rules that he went mad. Their guilt and remorse over what they had done. '''[-CLAY OF OUR CLAY-]'''.]]

* [[spoiler: The golems were so desperate for freedom that they tried to make their own leader. They wanted him to be so perfect that they filled him with so many rules that he went mad. Their guilt and remorse over what they had done. '''[-CLAY OF OUR CLAY-]'''.
* When Dorfl is given the gift of his own ownership.]]

* Plenty about this particular book gets to me. [[spoiler: The golems were so desperate for freedom that they tried to make their own leader. They wanted him to be so perfect that they filled him with so many rules that he went mad. Their guilt and remorse over what they had done. '''[-CLAY OF OUR CLAY-]'''. And not finally, when Dorfl is given the gift of his own ownership.]]

* The image of the golems trying desperately to bring someone back to life by copying their own ''chem'' and slipping it in the dying man's mouth always makes me tear up. Even worse, the person who has to explain it to them is the dying man himself.