Student Question
What is the climax of the novel July's People?
Quick answer:
The climax of Nadine Gordimer's July's People occurs in the final pages when Maureen hears a helicopter and runs towards it, abandoning her family in her eagerness to escape. This moment represents the peak of tension and the point of no return, as Maureen's actions reflect her desperation to flee her new circumstances. The novel ends ambiguously, without a denouement, leaving readers with the intensity of this unresolved climax.
Nadine Gordimer's novel, set during a fictional civil war in which black rebels overthrow the white South African government, does not follow a conventional story arc. Therefore, the point of climax, the turning point of the story, isn't where you might expect to find it. Rather, July's People is constructed with a long exposition and rising action, a very late climax, and no denouement (falling action). This construction leaves the reader feeling dazed afterwards, wondering what really took place in the ambiguous and intense final scene. You'll therefore find the climax of July's People in the book's last pages.
- Unlike the Smales adults, the children quickly adapt to their surroundings. They make friends with July's children and learn their language. Young Royce even forgets how to read in this new environment.
- One day while the family is asleep, July takes the Smales' truck without asking permission. When he returns he assumes he has done nothing wrong. Clearly Bam and Maureen are holding on to the vestiges of white authority, while July has moved past it. He never returns the keys to the Smales.
- July introduces Bam to his tribe's chief, an intimidating character who tries to rope Bam into fighting the Russians and Cubans for him, whom he refers to as his real enemy over the whites. The chief is clearly corrupt and Bam is obviously uncomfortable in this situation.
- Bam's gun is stolen while the Smales are gathered with July's family one evening, listening to music. Maureen demands it back, but July says his friend Daniel must have taken it to join the revolutionaries. Her distrust of July grows.
She runs: trusting herself with all the suppressed trust of a lifetime, alert, like a solitary animal at the season when animals neither seek a mate nor take care of young, existing only for their lone survival, the enemy of all that would make claims of responsibility. She can still hear the beat, beyond those trees and those, and she runs towards it. She runs. (p. 160)
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