For the Story Teller: Chapter 5 - Story Climax

For the Story Teller: Story Telling and Stories to Tell, by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey is part of the HackerNoon Books series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Chapter V - STORY CLIMAX

We have found it helpful to liken the effect that a well-written, well-told story has upon a child’s mind to the appeal that a successful drama makes to an audience. We have discovered that the opening paragraph, the first sentence of a child’s story should have the quality that characterizes the scene disclosed on the stage when the curtain rolls up—compelling interest. Following this curtain raising of the story, there should be a series of pictorial scenes that carry the events that go to make up the story plot, strung upon a slender thread of curiosity, and giving the element of suspense to the story.

Following out this story structure we come, eventually, to the end. The curtain must fall at last before the eyes of the child audience and the closing of the story drama should be as mind stimulating as was its beginning. This is brought about by studying carefully the story climax.

The climax of a story should be a complete surprise to the listener and to the characters in the story, as well.

This quick note of the unexpected coming with compelling suddenness at the end of our story clinches the interest of the plot and makes the story indelible on the child’s mind sheet.

Certain well-known instances of climax as exemplified in child stories will clarify for us its surprise quality.

In one of the older plantation folk tales, Mr. Elephant and Mr. Frog are pictured as being good friends until Mr. Hare taunts them with their dissimilarity in size and says that Mr. Frog has boasted of the fact that Mr. Elephant is his “riding horse.” Then the story continues:

“Mr. Fox and Mr. Tiger and Mr. Lion all followed after Mr. Hare, crying: ‘Oho, oho, Mr. Elephant is little Mr. Frog’s riding horse.’

“Then Mr. Elephant turned around and he said in a very gruff voice to Mr. Frog:

“‘Did you tell them, grandson, that I was your horse?’

“And Mr. Frog said in a high, squeaky voice:—

“‘No, no, grandfather.’

“But all the time Mr. Frog was thinking of a trick to play on Mr. Elephant.

“The next day, Mr. Elephant and Mr. Frog started off for a long walk. Mr. Frog had heard of a place where the swamps were deep and muddy. Mr. Elephant knew a place where the bananas grew ripe and thick. And they spent a pleasant day. On the way home Mr. Frog hopped up close to Mr. Elephant, and he said in his high, squeaky voice:—

“‘Grandfather, I have no strength to walk. Let me get up on your back.’

“‘Climb up, my grandson,’ said Mr. Elephant.

“He put his trunk down for a ladder, and Mr. Frog climbed up. They had not gone very far when Mr. Frog hopped up close to Mr. Elephant’s ear, and he said:—

“‘I am going to fall, grandfather. Give me some small cords from the roadside that I may bind your mouth, and hold myself upon your back.’

“‘I will, grandson,’ said Mr. Elephant.

“So Mr. Elephant stripped some small cords from a birch tree by the roadside, and handed them to Mr. Frog. Then Mr. Frog bound Mr. Elephant’s mouth, and they went on a little farther. It was not long, though, before Mr. Frog spoke again to Mr. Elephant.

“‘Grandfather,’ he said, ‘find me a small green twig that I may fan the mosquitoes from your ears.’

“‘I will, grandson,’ said Mr. Elephant, so he broke a small, green twig from the birch tree, and reached it up to Mr. Frog; and just then they came toward home.

“‘See Mr. Elephant,’ cried Mr. Hare.

“‘See Mr. Elephant,’ cried Mr. Tiger.

“‘See Mr. Elephant,’ cried Mr. Lion, and all the others, ‘Mr. Elephant is Mr. Frog’s horse.’

“Mr. Elephant turned himself about, and he saw Mr. Frog on his back, holding the reins and the whip.

“‘Why, so I am, grandson,’ said Mr. Elephant.

“Then Mr. Frog jumped down to the ground, and he laughed and he laughed until he nearly split his coat, because he had played a trick on Mr. Elephant.”

This quotation serves very well to illustrate perfect story climax. In the beginning of the story, an apparently impossible situation was suggested. To the child listener it seems incredible that an elephant could so far forget his dignity as to serve as the steed of a frog. To the elephant himself, as well, this situation appears to be incompatible with his social status in the jungle. As the story advances, each scene prepares a way for the unexpected dénouement and the climax is found in the surprise to the hearers and to Mr. Elephant as well when the curtain falls upon him unwittingly playing the part of “riding horse” to little Mr. Frog.

Hans Christian Andersen’s inimitable allegory of “The Ugly Duckling” owes a measure, at least, of its popularity to its perfect climax. In the beautiful word pictures of the story we follow its hero, the Ugly Duckling, through his series of perilous and sorrowful adventures, sympathizing with but not anticipating the outcome of them. In no single one of the scenes of the story do we have a hint of the glorious ending of the hero’s journeying. Finally comes a quick, artistic curtain falling:

—“Then he flew toward the beautiful swans. As soon as they saw him they rushed to meet him with outstretched wings.

“‘Kill me!’ said the Ugly Duckling; but as he bent his head, what did he see reflected in the water? It was his own image—not a dark, gray bird, ugly to see—but a graceful swan.

“Then the great swans swam around him and stroked his neck with their beaks for a welcome. Some little children came into the garden.

“‘See,’ they cried, clapping their hands.

“‘A new swan has come and he is more beautiful than the others!’”—

This story climax is perfect, also, because it carries the element of surprise to the story hearers and the story hero, the Ugly Duckling, as well.

It seems to be almost impossible to find many instances of well constructed climax in the short story for children. The story teller must look for climax and in the event of not being able to find it in the story that she selects for telling, it will be necessary for her to make over her story ending that it may be a complete surprise to her listeners, in this way strengthening the plot greatly. Many stories just stop, giving one a feeling of dissatisfaction. There has been no climax to make of the whole a finished picture, complete in its minutest detail of light and shade and forming an unerasable vignette, on the child’s mind.

Certain child stories, however, stand out as illuminating instances of what climax means in deepening the mental appeal for the child, etching the story picture, so to speak. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Great Stone Face,” forms one instance. A careful reading of the story will disclose Hawthorne’s subtle use of suspense, the art of “making his audience wait” for his dénouement. He makes us see the fertile valley beneath the great mountain upon whose side there had been sculptured by Nature, the wonderful stone face. We are carried, breathlessly, along upon the tide of the narrative through the boy Ernest’s longing to bear the image of these beautiful features, the futile attempts of old Gathergold, old Blood-and-Thunder and the others to prove their likeness to the Great Stone Face until we reach our climax in Ernest’s own transformation into the great likeness unsuspected by himself or by us.

It seems to be the great short story writers, only, who have given us really illuminating instances of climax—surprise ending—in stories that will appeal to children in a stimulating way. In Hawthorne’s “Snow Image” the curtain falls upon a surprise situation. Oscar Wilde leaves us unconsolable at his apparent ending of “The Happy Prince.” The little swallow is dead and the Prince has given away his gold and jewels.

“So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince who was no longer beautiful and so no longer useful and they melted the statue in the furnace.

“‘What a strange thing!’ said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. ‘This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away!’

“So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead swallow was also lying.”

But as we hold our breath, the climax is flung gloriously out.

“‘Bring me the two most precious things in the City,’ said God to one of His Angels and the Angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

“‘You have rightly chosen,’ said God, ‘for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.’”

In the story of Cosette and her doll in “Les Misérables,” Victor Hugo has given us a complete story vignette with a perfectly developed climax of surprise as Jean Valjean gives to Cosette, the “toad” of Madame Thenardier’s Kitchen, the doll about which she had dreamed. Laura Richard’s short stories for children abound in instances of illuminating climax—no hint of the story ending being given until the curtain falls. Her story of “The Golden Windows” in which a little boy sets out upon a journey to find the windows of gold that he sees beyond the village from his own poor little home and discovers at the end of the day that his own home windows, viewed from a distance are gold and those he has found are gray and dull, is an example of Mrs. Richards’ skilled use of climax to force her story point into the child’s mind.

The mental appeal of climax is a very real and vital one for the consideration of the story teller. Once we fix in our minds the two characteristics of artistic story ending, surprise to the story characters and to the children, and an ending that ties the knot of the narrative, our story curtain will fall, leaving the children a lap farther along in their mental development than they were when the curtain rose.