Strawberry Spring 'And The Last Rung On The Ladder'

Why study King? “It was the possibility of darkness that made the day so bright”(King). Throughout the three short stories King use contrast and contradiction to develop this tense horror in the reader's mind. In the short stories “Strawberry Spring”, “The Boogeyman”, and “The Last Rung On The Ladder”, King uses techniques such as terror, horror, and gross details to captivate his reader. In the short story “Strawberry Springs”, Stephen King uses terror to captivate his reader. For one thing, the narrator talks about how his memory has blank stops the night of the strawberry springs murders, “I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night. And oh dear God, I think so too”(King). Years later, on strawberry springs the narrator loses parts of his memories again. This shows that King uses the element of surprise to further terrorize his reader. The whole time the narrator has no idea he’s the killer, then right at the end King drops the bomb revealing him as the serial killer making the story that much more terrorizing. King captivates his …show more content…
For instance, Larry receives a letter from his sister, Katrina, right after his move to L.A., “I read what was in it and next thing I knew I was standing in the living room with the phone in my hand, getting ready to call Dad. I put the phone down with something like horror. He was an old man, and he’d had two heart attacks. Was I going to call him and tell about Katrina’s letter so soon after we’d been in L.A.? To do that might very well have killed him.”(King). The most horrific thing a person can experience is the death of a loved one. Especially in the form of suicide. King uses the suicide of Katrina to send horror through the reader’s mind, having them feel the devastation of her death. King utilizes his skill of writing horrific things to pull in readers to his