In Stephen Kings, "The last rung on the ladder", by Stephen King the theme of downfall within a family is explained through physical and mental isolation. The entire story revolves around Larry and Katrina and depicts there characteristics. Larry a caring brother and Katrina a dependent sister.
Katrina is filled with various personality traits which include:
Loving Sister:
Katrina sincerely loves her brother and trusts him blindly. As the lines. “A look in those eyes and a man would be gone” clearly reflects that when Larry comes to see her injured sister the way she looks at him , her eyes are filled with love for him. Larry and Katrina are always bonded with true love for each other. They play together and share their joys and sorrow with each other. Larry on the other hand being a responsible brother always takes care of her
Dependent:
Another characteristic that this story depicts of Katrina is her dependent behavior. She is fully dependent on her brother for all…show more content… The blind trust she had on everybody led to the failure of her personal life and when she called out her brother for help he was way too busy in his career that he had no time to visit her and know about the phase she was going through. “she was the one who stopped writing” These lines clearly state that she was so broken and hurt because of the way life treated her that she even stopped writing to her brother. She mentions in one of her letter that it would have been better if she had died in that barn incident.
Along with these characteristics, her self-pity, carefree and ignorant nature sums up her personality. Katrina’s character bring the readers closer to the reality to life that if one needs to survive in this cruel world he should be self sufficient and independent and should have courage to face the realities, which unfortunately Katrina did not posses and eventually led to her