The Last Rung on the Ladder

Although this story was published in the late 1970s, it hints at the economic prosperity, individualism, and consumerism that would come to define the 1980s in the US and criticizes the mindset of valuing material success over familial relationships. The conflict of Family Ties Versus Financial Success is first illustrated through Larry’s father, whose career as a tractor salesperson begins to overshadow his role as a father, and then more strongly in Larry, as his dedication to his law career prevents him from maintaining his relationships with his sister, his wife, or any other people in his life.

Larry’s employment has brought him material success, as indicated by his clothing: “I wear expensive suits and my shoe-leather is the best” (295). However, he seems to get little joy or satisfaction from his work, and the metaphors he uses to portray his profession indicate its dehumanizing and even degrading nature. Describing his fellow law students, Larry says, “Those guys are greyhounds. If you lose sight of the little mechanical rabbit, it’s gone forever” (304). This metaphor conveys the speed and single-mindedness of his classmates, but it also offers a bleak view of the law students as animals exhausting themselves in a meaningless race for others’ profit. Additionally, one of Larry’s clients, the president of a large company, describes him as “his hired gun” (295), suggesting that he values Larry’s skills but sees him as a tool rather than an individual.

However, the text indicates that the real cost of such blinkered dedication to one’s career is the damage it causes to others. Katrina goes through two difficult divorces, and after each she writes Larry a letter and asks him to visit her. During her first divorce, he is in law school and decides he cannot spare the time to travel. During the second, he writes that he would like to visit, but “I had landed a job in a high-pressure firm, low guy on the totem pole, all the work and none of the credit” (304). His letter to her only focuses on his career and why he can’t leave. Over and over, he prioritizes his career over her needs, and the focus of his letter on his work demonstrates how self-absorbed he has become. They gradually write to each other less and less, and he does not bother to update his address with her when he moves. If he had, her final letter might have reached him in time for him to save her. At the end of the story, Larry regrets not having received the letter in time, as he admits it was the one thing that would have motivated him to help her. He can no longer sleep at night, picturing her jumping from the beam in the barn over and over. The story is thus a prescient critique of the materialism and focus on financial success that would come to dominate American society in the 1980s.

The text also tells the story of two children with different views of the world, and how each reacts to the disappointments and tragedies of adulthood, focusing on the theme of Regret. As a child, Katrina is fearless and trusts that the world will protect her, which can be seen when she dives headfirst into the haymow. Larry says of her more than once, “She was the one who always knew the hay would be there” (305), pointing to her faith in her own safety. She places great trust in the people she loves as well. When she is dangling from the broken ladder rung and Larry tells her to let go, she does so without hesitating, knowing that he has done something to save her even though she does not know exactly what. Larry is more cautious; even though he wants to swan dive into the hay like his sister, each time he tries, “the fear grabbed me the way it always did, and my swan turned into a cannonball” (299). He even holds his nose as he jumps into the hay, protecting himself in every way that he can.

The incident in which the ladder breaks underneath Katrina solidifies the differences between the two. Larry has miraculously saved Katrina by building a pile of hay beneath her, and so her trust in him grows even stronger. On the other hand, Larry is deeply shaken by how close Katrina came to dying and seems to lose what trust he did have in the world as a safe place. (This motif appears again in King’s 1984 fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon, in which a boy named Peter escapes from a tower jail cell by climbing down a rope. When the rope frays and snaps, Peter’s fall is broken by a pile of cloth napkins that his friends had piled underneath him.)

As they grow older, their respective worldviews impact their approaches to life. Katrina repeatedly follows her heart and trusts in others, which leads her into two unhappy marriages. Even her faith in her brother turns out to be misplaced, as he is no longer a reliable source of support. The depth of her belief in him means that her disappointment when she finally realizes that he is no longer there for her is all the more crushing. Her final letter may have been her last attempt to reach out to Larry for help though, tellingly, she does not ask him to visit. The letter is merely a statement about her regret about the course her life has taken.

After the death of his mother, Larry, already the cautious one, focuses on his education and his career rather than on family relationships. He seeks financial security in a law career and gradually creates both physical and emotional distance between himself and his family members, most likely to protect himself from another loss. Ironically, this distance contributes to his sister’s feeling of hopelessness, and so his fear that he might lose someone important to him becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Neither Katrina nor Larry has found happiness as an adult, and the story’s title references multiple allusions to climbing that have brought them to their current points in life. Larry has been climbing the corporate ladder steadily since his days at law school. He is now “one of the best independent corporation lawyers in America” (295). At the top of his field, there is nowhere left for him to climb; he has reached the last rung on his career ladder. Katrina’s ladder refers to her childhood accident and her reaching a crisis point in her life, from which she felt there was no escape. The manner of her death—climbing to the top of a city building and “swan diving” off—also shows her climbing, this time, without having faith that anyone will save her. Both siblings reaching unhappiness in life through climbing suggests that the precarity of being high up, both literally and metaphorically, inevitably leads to danger.