The Last Rung on the Ladder

The text is written in first-person point of view, meaning that Larry, the main character, is telling the story from his perspective. Unlike the third-person point of view, which refers to characters through an external narrator, the use of first-person closely follows Larry’s experiences, making his emotions more accessible to the reader. His firsthand descriptions convey his terror as he frantically tries to build up a pile of hay to save Katrina’s life, his relief when he discovers that she has survived, and his shock when he receives the last letter that she sent him. On the other hand, the reader’s knowledge is also limited to what Larry knows. For example, the only information provided about Katrina’s adult life is what Larry learns from her letters. Consequently, much of Katrina’s experience is left out of the narrative.

In foreshadowing, the story hints at events that will come later, and several places in this story foreshadow Katrina’s death. When describing the feeling of jumping into the hay, Larry notes that it feels “like Lazarus must have felt” (297), referring to the biblical story of Lazarus, who dies but is brought back to life by Jesus four days later. In the scene where Katrina falls from the ladder, she is indeed like Lazarus. After she hits the ground, Larry runs to the pile and, seeing that “her face was deadly pale and her eyes were shut” (302), is certain that the fall has killed her. However, she has escaped with only a broken ankle, almost as miraculously as Lazarus returning to life. As an adult, though, there is no one to save her or hay to break her fall.