What Does The Last Rung On The Ladder Mean

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Checking up on someone every once in awhile or letting them know what’s going on can really change them mentally. They can have a positive mentality towards life. This is presented in a short story “The Last Rung on the Ladder” by Stephen King. In the short story Larry receives a tragic letter from his sister, Katrina. He remembers the incident that happened in the barn. They were climbing up a tall ladder and jumped off a loft into a sack of hay. The ladder began to break but Katrina insisted she’ll do one last jump, by the time the almost reached the top of the ladder split in half, she held on for as long as she could and jumped into a pile of hay Larry put down to catch her fall. Then the story goes back to present time and the letter basically says that she wished Larry didn’t save her from falling and at the end of the story she jumps off a building (to her death.) King uses imagery,irony. And allusion to show not being available for someone can cause traumatic events because you won’t have time to prevent certain things. Imagery was presented in the short story “The Last Rung on the Ladder” tos how how not being available can change a person. The story states, “... her pigtails straight up …show more content…

The story states, “she stood poising in the toes of her old low topped keds, hands out in front of her,and the swanned.” (King,38) This was when Katrina did her last jump off the loft. This quote alludes to her death later on in the story, when she jumps off a building to er death. The headlines says, “CALL GIRL SWAN-DIVES TO HER DEATH.” The author basically told us what was going to happen to Katrina and how it’ll happen. Notice how in both scenes she fell and the first fall could have killed her, but someone was present to help her. But in her second fall she had no one which made things worse. This shows that just by being present in anything can change a person's

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