Summary of The Vertical Ladder

The story" The Vertical Ladder" is a compassionate and virtuous creation of William Sansom. This story shows the courage of a young man whose name is Flegg,who wants to impress a beautiful girl among the group of boys. He attempts to climb a vertical ladder on an old gasometre a storage tower in a deserted gasworks. The Reader experiences the event through the consciousness of the climber living through a various perceptions and changing emotion of the performer as he undergoes a wide gamut of feeding from foolish bravado to sheer terror and dreadful isolation.

                        The group of boys and two girls are probably teenagers because they are apparently old enough to be given considerable freedom, yet young enough to have little sense of responsibility. They are immature to judge the things, that is wrong and right concept of life. Even they don't know what will be the result of that. They have walked out the back gate of public park in to a run down, almost deserted section of town, wondered on the gasworks and started throwing bricks at the rusty gasometer because of undeveloped brain. The protagonist is showing off, casting his bricks higher than the others, claiming that he knows something about throwing granades, the shout comes from one of the girls, "Bet you can't climb as high as you can throw ".Then the boys immediately take up the challenges and tounting tone of girls. The playful psychological game quickly pushes 'Flegg' into a position of bravado from which he can not gracefully retreat without losing face. It is very clear to say that in the society the common thing is that when a girl gives a bet to the boy then the boy can do as much as possible because of that tounting voice of girls. In this story of Sansom, we can see the psychological game of a young boy. The boy climbs on that tower without knowing the result of that. 

This promise of excitement to come sustain the readers for the several paragraphs of preliminary events. These credibility to the situation, showing how it arises from the natural self absorption, sexual rivalries, jealousy and insecurity of a young man. Samson is adapted at describing how the appearance of an object changed radically from different perspectives. When Flegg first looks up from his position on the Vertical Ladder, the effect is quite alien to the impression, it gives even a few yards away from the tower. The precision of this passage is remarkable for both its visual accuracy and its psychological effects. 

According to my point of view, this is a horror story of Sansom because in this story readers can find out the psychological effects and physical effects both. But Sansom wants to aware us from the tounting tone of girls in the society. Think well before doing anything in life. Never come into force by others ' provoked voices and sounds. So, finally I think this story is very relevant and remarkable for us.