Charlotte's Web — Chapter 10

About This Passage

White opens the chapter with the chapter's thesis about creative patience. The parallelism — if she waited long enough, a fly would come; if she thought long enough, an idea would come — is a compact argument about how ideas come to those who prepare to receive them.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 10 in three movements: the long wait and sudden arrival of Charlotte's idea; the Arable children's visit, culminating in Avery's attempt to capture Charlotte and the rotten egg explosion that saves her; and Charlotte's midnight cutting and weaving of her web. In your retelling, attend to the tonal shifts White uses to move between each section.

Discussion Questions

1. Charlotte claims, 'People are not as smart as bugs.' How does White use Charlotte's confidence — bordering on contempt — for human intelligence to set up the moral mechanics of the novel's central deception, and is the claim presented as literal truth or as strategic bravado?
2. The near-capture of Charlotte by Avery is averted by the rotten goose egg Templeton had hoarded. What does this plot turn suggest about how White views causation — particularly the relationship between apparent nuisances and hidden providences in the barn's moral ecology?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide