Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
The chapter opens with a writing lesson disguised as a spider sitting still. Two paired time-phrases - 'Day after day,' 'Hour by hour' - stretch the waiting; a participial opener ('Having promised...') hangs the obligation over everything; and the final sentence runs its analogy on a semicolon hinge: waiting catches flies in one half, thinking catches ideas in the other. The grammar itself is patient - each sentence holds still until its point arrives.
Day after day the spider waited, head-down, for an idea to come to her. Hour by hour she sat motionless, deep in thought. Having promised Wilbur that she would save his life, she was determined to ke...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the chapter as a study in attention: who watches, who sleeps, who plans, and who never notices. Track Charlotte's line from waiting to idea to midnight weaving; track the children's line from kitchen to swing to raspberries to the pigpen fence; and mark the collision - a raised stick, a lost balance, a broken egg - that neither line saw coming. End with what each character knows by midnight, and what only the reader knows.
Discussion Questions
- When Charlotte announces that 'people are very gullible' - 'Easy to fool,' she explains - Wilbur answers, 'That's a mercy,' and promptly falls asleep in the shade. He has just heard that the species deciding his fate is easily tricked, and it comforts him. What does the exchange show about what each of them needs from the same fact? Use the words of the gullible lesson and the details of what each does next to explain how one fact serves two different hearts.
- Wilbur rests while Charlotte keeps watch: he 'lay down in the shade of his fence and went fast asleep' while 'the spider, however, stayed wide awake, gazing affectionately at him and making plans for his future.' By midnight he is deep in his soft bed and she is still at work. What does the chapter show through that steady contrast? Use the words of the gazing sentence and the details of the midnight scene to explain what Wilbur's easy sleep tells us about Charlotte's labor.
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary
Item 1
By one's own nature; without effort or pretending.
Item 2
With warm love; tenderly.
Item 3
Roused oneself to action after stillness.
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free