event or development within a story where all the struggles of the characters are resolved. Naturally, it comes near the end; how near depends on the nature of the story. Sometimes the climax is the very last event; usually, however, a few closing events are needed to show the consequences of the resolution.
For instance, the climax of We the Living is the scene where Andrei discovers that Kira is Leo’s mistress, and, as part of the same development, Andrei’s speech to the Party, when he rebels openly. The events which follow are merely the conclusion.
The climax of The Fountainhead is the Cortlandt explosion and Roark’s trial.
The main issues of The Fountainhead were the following: the conflict of Roark against society; the conflict of Roark against Dominique, who believed that the good cannot win on earth—that evil is powerful and will always win; the conflict of Roark against Wynand, who believed that the pursuit of power (the power to rule men by force) is a practical means of serving his own idealistic values; the contrast between Roark and Keating, the originator versus the second-hander who attempts to rise by using other people rather than his own mind; the conflict of Roark against Toohey, the man deliberately committed to an evil philosophy of power.
The explosion of the Cortlandt housing project resolves all of these issues.
The Cortlandt explosion (and aftermath) shows us Roark winning against society. It brings Dominique back to Roark by convincing her that the good does win, regardless of how terrible its struggle against evil is. When Wynand attempts to defend Roark in the Cortlandt case, he comes to realize that his whole life policy is mistaken, that the kind of power he has sought—power over men—can only destroy his values, not serve them. The Cortlandt project is the climax of Keating’s lifelong attempt to rise as a second-hander—and the final act of his hopeless destruction. As to Toohey, he is at the height of his power, he mobilizes all the collective forces of public opinion that he can in the Cortlandt case—and he loses.
This is the pattern of a complex plot climax—a climax in action, not merely in discussion. I had to devise an action that dramatized and resolved all of the above conflicts (and many smaller ones), showing in each case which side wins, which one loses, and why. Not every novel is as complex as The Fountainhead, but if you understand the method by which all its conflicts were integrated in its climax, you will be able to construct climaxes for stories of your own, which might involve fewer issues.
(On a first novel, I do not advise that you try anything as complex as The Fountainhead. But there are no “shoulds” in a literary career. If you feel you can, go right ahead.)
The climax is that stage at which the worst consequences of the plot-theme conflict come into the open and the characters have to make their final choice. You can judge a story’s climax by asking: Has it resolved the central conflict? If not, the story is badly constructed.
If you know the plot-theme of your story, you will know what is the proper climax, and whether or not you are letting your story down. If the central conflict merely peters out—or if it is resolved un-clearly, so that the reader does not really know what final decisions the characters have made—this is an improper ending.
A climax does not have to take place in one day or one scene. There is no rule about its length, which is determined by the nature of the story and by the number of issues which have to be resolved. In a stage play, the climax usually does take place in one scene; in a novel, it can involve several events. But these events have to be part of one sequence. For instance, the Cortlandt explosion and Roark’s trial are several chapters apart; but all the events in this part of the story are intrinsically connected. The explosion sets off the climax, and the other events—such as Toohey’s activity, Wynand’s failure, Roark’s trial and victory—follow from or are involved in this one action.
The term anticlimax refers to a development after the climax that does not follow from it. For instance, it would have been an anticlimax if, after the Cortlandt trial, I had shown Roark and Wynand quarreling about an unpaid commission on some building. Considering the issues that had been resolved between them, such an issue could be of no