The Last Rung on the Ladder

“The Last Rung on the Ladder,” a short story by American author Stephen King, uses extensive flashbacks to convey the themes of Loss of Childhood Innocence, Family Ties Versus Career Success, and Regret. “The Last Rung on the Ladder” appears in Night Shift, King’s first collection of short stories, which was published in 1978. Although King is best known for writing horror, this story does not entirely fit into that genre. It is instead suspenseful and emotional, describing an incident in which a young boy saves his sister from a potentially lethal fall and the sister’s death by suicide decades later.

This guide refers to the first Anchor Books edition of Night Shift published in 2012.

Content Warning: The guide and source text refer to death by suicide and corporal punishment.

Written from the first-person perspective of Larry, the protagonist, the story takes place in two time periods. The first is the present day, sometime in the 1970s, when Larry receives a letter from his younger sister Katrina nine days after her death by suicide.