Character Analysis Of Stephen King's The Last Rung On The Ladder

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Time can change everything including a person’s personality, which is shown in Stephen King’s ‘The Last Rung on the Ladder”, by portraying one of the main characters, Kitty. She goes through a profound change after her life begins to disintegrate. At the beginning of the story, she appears to be daring and trusting but later without her brother to help her, she becomes hopeless and weak who would rather jump from the top of a building than be tortured by life.

Kitty is a daring person with strong willingness to undertake new things that might involve risks of danger. Early in the story King reveals this character in the eyes of Larry, when Larry describes his sister as “she was the second biggest tomboy in Hemingford.” (King 22). “Tomboy” …show more content…

After they enter the stage of adulthood, Kitty has been writing his brother many letter about her life lately but every time Larry seems to have different excuses, which makes her tired of waiting as she writes one letter, “ Can you come, Larry? It 's been a while.” (King 25). She particularly adds this remark at the end of the letter to remind his brother of her purpose of writing letter to him and her hope is slowly but surely destroyed. Throughout the story, Kitty exhibits drastic change but her brother only notices the change after she commits suicide. He describes, “I couldn 't believe that my sister and the beaten woman who signed 'Kitty ' in a circle at the bottom of her letters were really the same person.” (King 25). Larry has grown up but he forgets to catch up Kitty’s growth and he still remains at the point, where her “sister was a girl with pigtails, still without breasts.” “Pigtails” here can represent naivety and in opposite, “breast” is always associated with maturity. Larry is blinded in front of Kitty’s growth and simply ignores her need, which subsequently leads to her loss in hope. Now she loses trust in both her husband and her brother, who only turn her trusts into despair. “She was the one who stopped writing” (King 26), as Larry later realizes. Kitty finally decides to lay her pen to rest so there is no more disappointment, but the only thing left for her is desperation and endless suffering. She struggles to find a reason to go on living and tries to battle with herself about committing suicide, but her brother has not yet shown up. In the last letter, Kitty writes, “I 've been thinking about it a lot lately... and what I 've decided is that it would have been better for me if the last rung had broken before you could put the hay down.” (King 26) Kitty regrets that Larry saves her and she knows the hay will not be there anymore because there is

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