Part 13 (1/2)

The climax of a story must be a genuine climax--that is, it must be the culmination of the interest of the story, and it must definitely end and eliminate the element of suspense. The climax, or its immediate consequences, must decide the destinies of all your characters, and the fate of all their schemes. If the heroine is hesitating between her two lovers she must decide in the climax or on account of it; if the hero is in a position of great danger he must be killed or saved. The revelation need not be couched in the bald phrase, ”And so John married Kate;” but it may be hinted at or suggested in the most subtle manner; but settled in some way it must be. Stockton did otherwise in ”The Lady, or the Tiger?” but he sought for humorous effect, and all things are fair in the funny story. Stories which are meant to be serious, but which leave the reader still puzzling over the possibilities of the plot, are likely to get their author into serious difficulties with the reading public, even if the editors can be persuaded to overlook his idiosyncracies.

The amateur is p.r.o.ne to the conviction, deduced, I fear, from the practice of the cheap melodrama and the cheaper novel, that ”climax”

and ”tragedy” are synonymous terms, and that he is violating sacred traditions unless he ends his tale with a violent death. But it is by no means necessary that the climax of a short story should be or should contain a catastrophe or a tragedy. Its nature depends entirely upon the character of the tale in which it appears, and it may be just as strong and just as thrilling if it consists only of the ”Yes” with which the heroine answers the hero's wooing. Indeed, it not infrequently happens that the tragedy or the catastrophe which appears in the climax is only an accessory to the real climax, a cause or a result of it. The climax of ”The Ambitious Guest” is a tragedy; but the climax of Irving's ”The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” though certainly a catastrophe, is anything but tragic, if read in the ironic spirit in which it was written:

Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him.

Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late.

It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash; he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider pa.s.sed by like a whirlwind.

While in Poe's ”The Black Cat,” one tragedy is a preliminary of the climax and another is in a manner the result of it; but the real climax is the discovery of the cat:

... a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily.

The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. On its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

Nor does the mere introduction of a tragedy make a climax, for though the following paragraphs contain two tragedies, there is no climactic force:

Joseph, who had been sitting with his head on his knees, and wondering what in the world was going to happen, raised his head, and exclaimed, on seeing his brother, ”You have come after me--” At this instant some one struck him on the head with a pistol, which brought him to the floor. But Harry, hearing the familiar voice, and seeing the man also, knew too well who it was. He shouted at the top of his voice, ”Stop! Wait! This thing must be investigated!” Telling them who the prisoner was, and pleading with them, he was finally able to disperse the mob, though against their own will.

The next morning, when Mamie was brought to consciousness again, she begged that he should not be punished.

On learning the truth he was immediately released, but the bitter grief, mingled with so much excitement, was more than he could endure. He died that night at ten.

The bitterness occasioned by this catastrophe remained in the bosom of Mamie, and she too died of a broken heart.

The plot of a certain type of story requires subordinate and preliminary climaxes to relieve the tension or advance the action, as already stated.[42] Such periods, when given genuine climactic force, are antagonistic to the spirit of the short story, in that they violate the unity, and a story containing them is usually faulty otherwise; but such stories have been written by good writers and so must be recognized here. The preliminary climaxes must be sufficiently few, sufficiently subordinate and sufficiently distant not to detract from the force of the chief climax. The main point is to see that one of the preliminary climaxes is not really _the_ climax, for inexperienced writers sometimes allow their stories to run on longer than they should; or they confuse what is merely an incident with what should be made the main crisis. In ”The Ambitious Guest” there is only one climax; but in Hawthorne's ”Mr.

Higginbotham's Catastrophe” I find no less than five critical points, which I here subpend with the numbers of the paragraphs in which they occur:

-- 7.

”Old Mr. Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard at eight o'clock last night by an Irishman and a n.i.g.g.e.r. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael's pear tree where n.o.body would find him till the morning.”

-- 14.

”... if squire Higginbotham was murdered night before last I drank a gla.s.s of bitters with his ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his store as I was riding by, and treated me....”

-- 21.

”No, no! There was no colored man. It was an Irishman that hanged him last night at eight o'clock; I came away at seven.”

-- 36.

”I left Kimballton this morning to spend the vacation of commencement-week with a friend about five miles from Parker's Falls. My generous uncle, when he heard me on the stairs, called me to his bedside and gave me two dollars and fifty cents to pay my stage-fare, and another dollar for my extra expenses.”

-- 49.

He rushed forward, prostrated a st.u.r.dy Irishman with the b.u.t.t-end of his whip, and found--not, indeed, hanging on the St. Michael's pear tree, but trembling beneath it with a halter round his neck--the old identical Mr. Higginbotham.

These several climaxes form a perfect series, each a little higher than its predecessor, and all logically culminating in the chief climax of the story in -- 49; and by this progressive and culminative effect they go far to preserve the sense of unity which their presence endangers.

Such real if minor climaxes are entirely different from the several stages of the story ill.u.s.trated in Chapter IX by James' ”The Lesson of the Master.”