Literary Terms: climax, parody, realism

Climax- Noun
1. The highest or most intense point in the development or resolution of something
2. In a literary work, a decisive moment that is of maximum intensity or is a major turning point in a plot.
My definition of the climax is the highest, craziest, and most intense part of a story! A mnemonic for a Climax is the scene in the movie, Titanic, when the ship is sinking nose first in the icy water, and the beautiful Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet are holding on to the boats railings for dear life. The top of Titanic is the climax of the ship’s height, but it is also the climax of the movie. At this moment, the audience has no clue whether these two characters are going to fall or not. The possibilities of the next moments are endless, and everything in the story has led up to the inevitable sinking of Titanic.
Here I included a snip of this scene:




Parody- Noun
1. A humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of writing.
2. Any humorous, burlesque, or satirical imitation of a person, event, etc.
A parody makes fun of the actual product. We see this on TV shows. For example, in the Disney Channel show, So Ramdom!, there is a skit called The Real Princesses of New Jersey. This is a parody of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Over the past year, starting with Jersey Shore, many reality shows have come out that claim to have Jersey origins, and sport the popular “snooki poof”, bling bling, and GTL. As a result, many New Jersey parodies have come out that poke fun of the original copies.






Realism- Noun
1. A manner of treating subject matter that presents a careful description of everyday life, usually of the lower middle classes.
2. A theory of writing in which the ordinary, familiar, or mundane aspects of life are represented in a straightforward matter-of-fact manner that is presumed to reflect life as it actually is.
Realism is exactly how it sounds. It is the act of presenting things how they really are. A movie such as Twilight, Enchanted, or Transformers would NOT be considered realism because everyday people do not deal with vampires, storybook characters, or alien robots on an everyday basis. A good example of realism are movies that have events that could happen to an average person.