Novel: Charlotte's Web

Overview
E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web is a gently comic, deeply tender novel about friendship, language, and the cycles of farm life. Set primarily in a barn belonging to the Zuckerman family and at a late-summer county fair, it follows a runt pig named Wilbur and a gray barn spider, Charlotte A. Cavatica, whose cleverness and devotion transform the fate of an ordinary animal and the rhythms of a small rural community.

Plot
The story begins when Fern Arable, a compassionate farm girl, persuades her father not to kill a newborn runt pig. She names him Wilbur and bottles-feeds him until he grows strong. When Wilbur becomes too large to keep, Fern sells him to her uncle Homer Zuckerman, where he moves into the big barn filled with the sounds and opinions of geese, sheep, a cynical rat named Templeton, and other creatures. Fern often visits, listening to the animals’ conversations that adults claim not to hear.

Lonely and anxious about his purpose, Wilbur befriends Charlotte, a wise, resolute spider who lives above his pen. When Wilbur learns he is being fattened for slaughter, Charlotte promises to save him. She begins weaving words into her web to influence the humans’ perception of the pig. “Some Pig” appears first, stopping the plan to butcher him and attracting curious neighbors. Successive webs proclaim “Terrific” and “Radiant,” each unveiling at dawn like a small miracle. The Zuckermans bathe Wilbur in buttermilk, reporters arrive, and Wilbur becomes a local sensation.

Charlotte’s work is quietly strategic. Templeton, bribed with food, scrounges newspapers and labels for striking words. The barn’s old sheep provides blunt counsel, and Fern’s doctor notes that wonder is not confined to the human world. As summer wanes, Wilbur is taken to the county fair. Charlotte, sensing her life nearing its end, travels with him and spins both a final word, “Humble”, and a silken egg sac filled with her offspring. Wilbur earns a special prize, not as the largest hog but as an extraordinary pig, and his life is guaranteed.

Charlotte, spent and content with her work, dies alone at the fair. Wilbur, grieving but steady, carries her egg sac home in his mouth and guards it through the winter. In spring, hundreds of spiderlings hatch and balloon away on silken threads; three, Joy, Aranea, and Nellie, remain, and Wilbur befriends them. The years turn, new generations hatch and drift, and although none equals Charlotte in wisdom or presence, Wilbur’s memory of her endures.

Themes
The novel explores the power of words to shape reality. Charlotte’s simple, exact language reframes Wilbur from meat to marvel, illustrating how naming and attention can confer dignity. Friendship across difference sits at the core: Charlotte’s practical, sacrificial love complements Wilbur’s innocence, while Templeton’s self-interest becomes, under pressure, a reluctant form of aid. The book faces mortality with calm candor, Charlotte’s death is both heartbreaking and ordinary, part of the natural order the barn embodies. Fern’s arc, as her fascination with animals yields gradually to human interests like riding the Ferris wheel with Henry Fussy, marks a gentle coming-of-age, the widening of attention that mirrors seasonal change.

Style and Legacy
White’s prose is spare, humorous, and exact, attentive to the textures of chores, weather, and small miracles at dawn. Garth Williams’s illustrations amplify the novel’s tenderness without softening its honesty. The result is a story that honors the everyday while enlarging it, showing how loyalty, craft, and a few well-chosen words can save a life and leave a lasting web of meaning.