The following plan of presenting climaxes to classes has been found extremely helpful:
Read the following sentence carefully to yourself. Notice each clause, and try to discover if there is not something here that we have not had before. I want to ask you not to read more than that sentence until you have studied over it for some time. “It is an outrage to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is an atrocious crime; to put him to death is almost parricide; but to crucify him—what shall I call it?”
We have here another method used by writers and speakers for making an idea more striking. In this case, the speaker is condemning one who has caused the crucifixion of a Roman. The orator desires to impress upon the judges the seriousness of the offense. How does he do it? Instead of speaking at once about the crucifying of the victim, he begins by showing that a far less serious punishment was a grave offense against the Roman law. He says, “It is an outrage to bind a Roman citizen.” Then he goes another step, saying: “To scourge him is an atrocious crime.” Worse still: “To put him to death” (by any means) “is almost parricide.” And now, having shown that less extreme methods of punishment were great crimes, the orator is ready for his final statement: “But to crucify him—what shall I call it?” In other words, the speaker seems to have exhausted his vocabulary in giving names to lower crimes; when he comes to a name with which to describe the crime of crucifying a Roman, he finds his vocabulary does not have one strong enough. Do you not see how powerful an effect such an arrangement of clauses must have? It is much stronger than if the speaker had said merely, “I know no word to describe the crime of crucifying a Roman citizen.”
Analyze the following sentence, and explain how the thought is made more striking by this kind of arrangement. “I know it, I concede it, I confess it, I proclaim it.”
This method of increasing the effect is called climax. Whenever, for any reason, a speaker or writer keeps on adding thought to thought, making each succeeding idea stronger than the preceding, we have a climax. Although you may never have called it by this name you have used it many times. If you were determined to do a certain thing you might say, “I can do it, I will do it, I must do it.” Well, that is a climax. Or you might say, “You can’t have it for ten dollars, for fifty dollars, for a hundred dollars.” That is another climax.
Note this example: “If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms! never! never! never!” This, too, is a climax, each of the last three “never’s” being stronger than the preceding. If you will put yourself in the position of the speaker, you will soon feel that each “never” after the first is the result of stronger, more intense feeling. If you will think of it in this way you will notice the effect in your expression.
We shall close this lesson with two illustrations. Your teacher will tell you the story from which these extracts are taken, and then you will prepare them very carefully, taking particular pains to note the climax in each.
When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep,
And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,
And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,