Charlotte's Web
Publication Date: 1952
About the Author
Born Elwyn Brooks White on July 11, 1899, to Jesse Hart White and Samuel T. White, E. B. White grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, a suburb of New York City. The youngest child in a large family, born at the beginning of his father's greatest prosperity, White enjoyed a childhood of unusual privilege for those days. He had the first bicycle in the neighborhood, and at age twelve, his father presented him with a canoe. White was an inquisitive, open child who attended Mount Vernon public schools, summered in Maine, and eventually enrolled at Cornell University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1921. At Cornell, also, he acquired his lifelong nickname, Andy, after Cornell's president, Andrew D. White.
After graduation. White spent several years traveling across the United States and Europe, supporting himself by writ ing for the United Press, Cunard Lines, and the American Legion News Service, among others. He published his first piece in The New Yorker in 1925, beginning an association that continued until his death. White worked as an editor for The New Yorker during the decade following 1927 and contributed essays steadily for the rest of his life. In the process, White became America's premier essayist, a writer almost universally admired for his insight and for his writing style. He died on October 1, 1985, in Brooklin, Maine.
Oddly enough, White's longest works are his stories for young people: Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and The Trumpet of the Swan. His other works are collections of essays, most of which first appeared in The New Yorker. White once described himself as a "man unable to sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, untouched by the dedication required for sustained literary endeavor, yet unable not to write."
Overview
Charlotte's Web is an animal fable that deals with several important aspects of a happy life: friendship, heroism, constancy, and death. And yet the story treats these topics indirectly. The primary appeal of Charlotte's Web is its charming story. White allows the characters to explore their relationships with each other in such a way that the story's themes grow naturally from these inter actions. In the Zuckermans' bam, unbelievable things happen in very believable ways. Animals talk, a spider writes words in its web, and a pig wins fame that can only be described as undying, since he avoids being turned into hams and sausages. Yet all these characters act from perfectly natural motives. Any reader will recognize and, perhaps, identify with Wilbur's fear and loneliness. Charlotte's Web is a work of fantasy that draws much of its strength from White's evocation of the real world of the farmyard.
Setting
In a very real sense, Charlotte's Web is set in E. B. White's barn in Maine. There, White encountered the web of the spider Aranea cavatica in the doorway, while carrying a bucket of slops to his own pig, and decided to write a story in which a spider saves a pig. In transforming his own barnyard into a fictional world, White gives the animals voices and personalities. He uses human characters as well, principally Fern and the Zuckermans.
The main source of the book's enduring ability to touch generations of readers is its sense of reality amid the obvious fantasy. For all the unreal things that happen, the barnyard is nevertheless a real barnyard, with all the sights, sounds, and smells that go with it. Here, Wilbur the pig sleeps in a manure pile, and Charlotte the spider kills flies and drinks their blood. Here, too, Charlotte devises a plan to keep Wilbur from being killed to provide food for the Zuckermans' table. White uses farmyard reality as an anchor and as a source of suspense. Which world will prevail—the fantasy world in which animals talk, or the human world in which animals must die to provide for people's needs?
Themes and Characters
The suspense of Charlotte's Web is evident from the opening line, when Fern asks, "Where's Papa going with that ax?" As the reader soon discovers, he is going after Wilbur, and the main question becomes when—or whether—Wilbur will get the ax. Will the young girl Fern, spider Charlotte, or any of the other animals be able to save him? Justice, according to Fern, demands that a living creature be allowed a full life, even if it is just a runt pig. The practical farmer, however, sees the runt of the litter as a troublemaker and a source of food. Necessity dictates that the pig be slaughtered in the fall. Throughout the book, Wilbur's life hangs in a delicate balance.
Fern acts as a liaison between the human world and the animal world. She sits patiently in the barn, watching the antics of the animals, but when she tries to report to her parents that pigs and spiders can talk, the gulf between the two worlds becomes readily apparent. None of the other human characters—Fern's parents or the Zuckermans—believe her, and Fern's anxious mother asks the family doctor about her "delusions." The main adult characters are so practical that without some kind of extraordinary intervention, Wilbur's fate is sealed. Fern saves him once but cannot save him again.
The necessary intervention comes, not from outside, but from inside the barnyard, and from two unlikely sources: a small gray spider who acts out of friendship, and a barnyard rat, named Templeton, who acts from purely selfish motives. White uses these curious heroes and their divergent motives to make an important point about heroism. First, Charlotte does not fit any of the conventionally held concepts of the hero. She is small, apparently powerless, and weak. Yet she is Wilbur's friend, and her unselfish actions demonstrate that nobility has little to do with looks or power. Second, Templeton violates every tenet of what a hero should be; indeed, he is repulsive, greedy, and selfish in the extreme, and is only coaxed into helping Wilbur when the other animals appeal to his baser appetites. Yet his assistance is vital: he is the word finder who supplies Charlotte with copy for her web messages, and, at one point, he rescues Charlotte's egg sac. He is living proof that good can come from the most unlikely actions and even from the most unlikely sources.
Finally, the two characters do not act in concert to produce a good end; they act independently. Thus, this tale of heroism is different from more traditional narratives because the end is less certain than it might be. The fact that good prevails in this case does not leave the impression that good will always prevail.
Literary Qualities
White uses the genre of the fable to construct a narrative that makes its moral indirectly. Although he does not spell it out, the reader can readily discern White's point that love exerts a saving influence. Love does, indeed, produce wonders. First Fern's and later Charlotte's love saves Wilbur. At the same time, however, Wilbur does not get everything he wants. His joys are fleeting and bittersweet. Fern grows up more interested in Henry Fussy, the neighbor boy, than in Wilbur, and he discovers that his friend Charlotte is powerless against the real enemies of life—time and death.
Social Sensitivity
For all its innocence and simple delight, Charlotte's Web judiciously addresses the serious subject of death. Wilbur is threatened with murder throughout the book, of course, but in the end, when Charlotte's life is spent, the reality of death hits hardest. Yet here White makes his strongest statement about selflessness. Charlotte expends her last ounce of strength writing a final web message, the one that assures Wilbur that he will live. But he feels abandoned, lost without Charlotte, and his grief is both real and affecting. It is eased, however, by his mission. He persuades Templeton to bring Charlotte's egg sac down from the rafters at the fair, and then carries it back to the barn, cares for it, and welcomes the hatchling spiders when they emerge the next spring. His actions give Charlotte a kind of immortality, since her descendants live and flourish in the barn, and Wilbur always tells them tales of Charlotte. Although Wilbur cannot stop Charlotte from dying, he returns her love in the best way the world allows, by estab lishing her as a living tradition in the barnyard.
Topics for Discussion
1. In what way does White adapt the animals' fictional personalities to the way those animals act in real life?
2. The threat of death is a very serious part of everyone's life. Is it surprising to find that threat central to such a charming story as this?
3. When the message "some pig" appears in Charlotte's web, everyone except Mrs. Zuckerman is immediately impressed with Wilbur, not Charlotte. What might White be trying to say about human nature?
4. What do you think about the doctor's lack of concern over Fern's apparent delusions about animals and spiders talking?
5. A fable is a simple narrative in which talking animals are used to represent human characteristics. Usually, the fable ends with an explicit moral, or lesson. What moral, or morals, might be drawn from Charlotte's Web?
6. Part of White's reason for writing this novel was his own sense of the unfairness of raising an animal simply to kill it for food later. How does that basic sense of barnyard injustice help you to understand the book?
7. Templeton the rat acts solely out of self-interest, yet he is in many ways the hero of the story, next to Charlotte. How does Templeton's role in the book contribute to the impression that the story is real?
8. Think about the words Charlotte chooses to write in her web. What are the reasons she gives for choosing those words? Why are they particularly appropriate for Wilbur?
9. In the early drafts of Charlotte's Web, Fern and the other humans played a much smaller role. In fact, the book began with Wilbur already living in Zuckerman's barn, and Fern did not appear until several chapters had passed. Why did White decide to begin the book with Fern's saving Wilbur from her father's ax? What is Fern's role in the story?
Ideas for Reports and Papers
1. White based Charlotte on a spider known as Aranea cavatica. How closely does Charlotte conform to the characteristics of this species? What function does this scientific accuracy serve in the narrative?
2. Compare this fable with several fables by Aesop. What are the similarities and differences?
3. Write a plot summary of Charlotte's Web, but tell the story from Templeton's point of view.
4. White often uses barnyard settings and metaphors in his adult essays. How does his fictional use of the barnyard in Charlotte's Web compare with his use of it in some of his essays?
5. White uses many descriptions of places in Charlotte's Web: the barn, the dump, the county fair, and so forth. What effect do these descriptions have on a reader's response to the story?
6. Imagine Wilbur, years after the end of the story, about to die a peaceful, natural death. He decides to write a letter to post on the barn door, telling all the future generations of Charlotte's descendants about their heroic ancestor. Write that letter.
7. There are many definitions of heroism that may be derived from the characters in novels, films, stories, plays, and real life. Considering those examples and the characters in Charlotte's Web, what does White's definition of heroism seem to be?
8. Fern reacts strongly to the injustice of Wilbur's situation in life, and in so doing, she acts as White's surrogate, for he wrote the story out of his own similar feelings. Just what are Fern and White reacting against, and how is that situation unjust?
Related Titles/Adaptations
White's two other books for young people are also about animals interacting in a human world. Stuart Little (1945) is about the trials of being bom a mouse in a human family. Stuart must overcome adversity as he deals effectively with being different, and his positive, never-say-quit attitude helps him prevail. The Trumpet of the Swan (1970) follows Louis, a mute swan, who is handicapped in courting a mate without his voice. As with animals in other White stories, Louis overcomes his handicap by learning to play a trumpet as well as the great jazz musician, Louis Armstrong.
Charlotte's Web has been adapted into a sentimentalized but fairly faithful animated feature film, produced by Paramount and released in 1972. The film deals more broadly with the issues White treats in the novel, and it also uses a broader form of comedy. In fact, Templeton almost steals the show. The animators had a field day drawing his disgusting antics, especially his trip to the county fair, and Paul Lynde's voice is perfect for the role. Debbie Reynolds performs the voice of Charlotte; Henry Gibson is Wilbur; and the narrator is the familiar, deep-voiced Rex Allen, veteran of classics such as Old Yeller, Incredible Journey, and many Disney wildlife short subjects.
In 1970 Pathways of Sound released an audio recording of Charlotte's Web, narrated by White himself, after attempts by two professional readers did not satisfy him.
For Further Reference
Beck, Warren. "E. B. White." College English 7 (1946): 367-373. An insightful critical study.
Elledge, Scott. E. B. White: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. A thorough and enjoyable biography with a useful bibliography.
Neumeyer, Peter F. "The Creation of Charlotte's Web: From Drafts to Book." Horn Book 58 (October and December 1982): 489-497, 617-625. An in-depth study of White's authorial techniques.
Sampson, Edward C. E. B. White. Boston: Twayne, 1974. General introduction to White's life and works.
Thurber, James. "E. B. W." The Saturday Review of Literature 28 (October 15, 1938): 8-9. Sketch of White by a well-known friend.
Welty, Eudora. "Dateless Virtues." New York Times Book Review (September 25, 1977): 7, 43. Assessment of White's outstanding traits as a writer.
More Books by This Author
Stuart Little, 1945
Charlotte's Web, 1952
The Trumpet of the Swan, 1970
William Condon
University of Michigan