What is the climax of this novel? What happens? How do the events of this novel make you feel?

There are two types of people in this world. Those who see what the climax is, and those who don’t. People who don’t follow it by simple definition. “The climax is the turning point of the story, and is generally the most exciting part.” A common definition taught in high school language arts. But is literature really all that great if it’s just a story following rules? No! It needs to be free. It needs to flow, with what the writer is attempting to present in the form of a novel. Because of this, I have made my own meaning of climax. The climax is the part of the story that counts, that makes it a story, that changes everything. Others I have explained this to said, “Yeah, okay!” Then use it the wrong way. This can easily be mistaken as the “call to adventure” where the main character says, “should I do it, or not?” And there may even be more than one adventure. So the climax, to me, is a call to adventure, but the one that the book’s meaning is taken from.

Montag had many choices. Whether or not to have conversations with Clarisse. That changed a lot. Whether or not to steal books. That changed a lot. Whether or not to read Mildred’s friends poetry. That changed a lot. Whether or not to call up Faber and work with him. That changed a lot. But what really changed everything, what I see to be the climax of Fahrenheit 451 is the choice Guy Montag chose to murder Captain Beatty. Normally I would write out the passage, but time is gold, so I’ll simply explain the part in which so much anger builds up in Montag, mad at Beatty, mad at Mildred, mad at the world! Mad enough to murder, and that’s what he did. Had he not done that, if he had simply been arrested, there would be no reason to be on the loose. Beatty admitted himself that one person that knows the truth couldn’t do much anything about it anyway. But he killed Beatty, which gave him a reason to run. It gave him a reason to leave the city. And, had he not left the city, he would have been no better off than being caught by the Mechanical Hound. But he left, which saved his life, and gave that saved life a purpose. The purpose of remembering. Of thinking. Of being a REAL human…


-Tanner-