28 pages • 56 minutes read
Stephen KingThe Last Rung on the Ladder
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Larry
Larry is the narrator and protagonist of the story. The plot revolves around the tension between Larry’s childhood, when he lives a simple rural life with a loving family, and his life as an adult, when he is financially successful but has no close friends or family members. This character arc emphasizes the theme of Family Ties Versus Financial Success.
In the flashback, Larry is 10 years old and walks to his one-room school barefoot, with no bag to carry his books. Nevertheless, he is happy and has a close relationship with his sister and parents. He is selfless and caring, taking quick and decisive action to save Katrina’s life and showing great remorse for not doing a better job of protecting her.
Over time, his attention turns away from his family and increasingly toward his career. In the present day, he is a successful corporate lawyer, and he brags about the praise he receives for his work, his three assistants, and his expensive clothing. One of his clients describes him as a “hired gun,” a violent metaphor that points to his ruthlessness in his work but also foreshadows his role in the death of his sister. He moves frequently for work and thus has few relationships: he is not in touch with his ex-wife, his mother is dead, he no longer communicates with Katrina, and he has no close friends.
Katrina’s death serves as a wake-up call for him, and the letter he receives from her intensifies that effect. He begins to recognize the ways that he had distanced himself from others, particularly Katrina. Larry feels intense Regret at not being able to save Katrina and feels the need to reach out to someone about the letter. This shift back to a more family-oriented mindset is evident when Larry resists his initial impulse to call his father and tell him about the letter; he is the only family member Larry has left, and he has suffered two heart attacks. Larry’s father has also just returned from collecting Katrina’s belongings after her death. Larry fears that this news might kill his father, and even though they are not close, Larry does not want to lose him, too.
Katrina
Katrina, or Kitty as she goes by as a child and in her letters, is a lovely girl with blond hair and dark blue eyes who grows into a beautiful but unhappy woman. Her death by suicide is the catalyst for the story, but as Larry explains, it comes after a series of disappointments in her life and her relationships with others. Katrina’s character arc revolves around the themes of Regret and Loss of Childhood Innocence.
In the flashback, Katrina is 8 years old and a tomboy. She has a worshipful love for her big brother, Larry, and a trusting nature. For example, she has so much faith that the haymow will cushion her fall that she dives headfirst into the pile, and when she dangles precariously from the rung, she trusts that Larry will save her, telling him later, “I knew you’d take care of me” (303).
After this incident, Katrina’s life gradually worsens. Her mother dies, she foregoes college to marry, has two unhappy marriages, and ultimately becomes a sex worker. She has lost faith in others, especially her brother. After each divorce, she asks him to visit, and when he does not, her letters get shorter and eventually stop. Her last letter, a cry for help, is just one line long, and it goes unanswered.
Katrina is a foil for Larry in that each of their lives goes in a very different direction after they finish high school. While the story never mentions gender explicitly, each of their lives follows a track that in some ways is marked by their gender. Larry becomes a high-powered lawyer, which would have been rare for a woman to achieve in the 1970s. Katrina, meanwhile, wins a beauty pageant, which emphasizes that women were viewed for their attractiveness rather than their professional skills at that time. After being unable to bear children and having two failed marriages, Katrina laments that marriage is a “fix job,” or a scam. In her second letter to Larry, she uses violent imagery to describe the experience: “The only way you could catch the brass ring was to tumble off the horse and crack your skull” (304). That is not worth the “free ride” that marriage is supposed to be. Larry’s marriage and divorce do not cause upheaval in his life. He does not mention having children, but he has a career, and his wife takes care of domestic affairs like family correspondence.
On one hand, Katrina’s death could be seen as a critique of the limited opportunities that existed for women at this time, but on the other hand, the decision to forgo business school for marriage was her choice. In the end, she is a tragic character who believes her death was predetermined by a childhood accident.
Larry and Katrina’s Father
Larry and Katrina’s father, who is never named, is Larry’s only living family member when the story begins. Although he does not appear often in the story, he plays a greater role than Larry and Katrina’s mother, who is only mentioned in passing. His two main appearances both occur after incidents involving Katrina. The story opens with the sentence, “I got Katrina’s letter yesterday, less than a week after my father and I got back from Los Angeles” (294), and the story later reveals that Larry and his father were just in Los Angeles to deal with the aftermath of Katrina’s death. Larry considers calling his father about the letter but doesn’t because the father has recently had two heart attacks and Larry worries the news of the letter might kill him. The fact that he considers calling his father, however, shows that the two are in closer communication than Katrina and Larry had been.
The flashback portrays Larry’s father as a prosperous, hardworking farmer. He is away on the day of the incident because he is helping a neighbor fix a hay rake when their hired man failed to show up. Even when he loses the farm, he finds success in another career. Like Larry, he climbs the ladder in his field—tractor sales—beginning as a salesperson, then buying a dealership, then being hired into corporate management. He provided an example of a strong work ethic and desire for success that Larry emulated.
He is a strict father, giving the children chores to do in his absence. He punishes Larry after the accident, taking Larry out to the woodshed and beating him with a leather strap until Larry cannot sit down for a week. He states, “Every time I whack you, Larry, I want you to thank God your sister is still alive” (302). Larry seems to find this a just punishment, but the father is somewhat responsible for Katrina’s accident as well. He had repeatedly promised their mother that he would replace the ladder, but he had not gotten around to it. He does not address Katrina after the doctor proclaims her survival a “miracle.” Instead, he goes straight to punishing Larry. His only expression of emotion is his remark on the flight to Los Angeles that Omaha is “a lot further away than it looks” after they pass over it in the sky (295). Larry only realizes his father is expressing Regret after he receives Katrina’s letter. Even without the letter, their father realizes that he neglected Katrina and takes partial ownership of her death.
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