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Copywork
About This Passage
The chapter opens on Charlotte alone in the dark, and the paragraph rewards close attention to how White controls pace and register. Watch the movement from the long, subordinated opening sentence ('Far into the night, while the other creatures slept...') down to the two-word punch that lands like a wink: 'So were her teeth.' The diction is half technical (orb lines, radial lines, support) and half affectionate, so the same sentences that explain a spider's engineering also quietly insist she is an artist who loves her work. Copying it trains the ear for how sentence length and a sudden short clause can shift tone within a single paragraph.
Far into the night, while the other creatures slept, Charlotte worked on her web. First she ripped out a few of the orb lines near the center. She left the radial lines alone, as they were needed for ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary of the chapter, then identify the single most important sentence or moment and explain why it matters to the book as a whole and what it reveals about White's larger argument.
Discussion Questions
- Wilbur is the same pig throughout, yet a single word turns him into a wonder people travel to see. Explain what this chapter implies about whether a creature's worth lies in what it is or in what others are led to believe, and whether you find White's implication persuasive. Ground your answer in the people's reactions to the web.
- Most of this chapter is comic and tender, yet White slips a savage image into Charlotte's bedtime story: a fish 'beaten mercilessly' and a web 'sagging dangerously.' Why might White place that violence inside a lullaby-bound evening, and what would the chapter lose if he left it out? Use the words of the fish story to support your reading.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Flailing about violently; the fish's desperate fight gives Charlotte's gentle bedtime story a sudden savagery.
Item 2
Twisting and squirming in effort; how Wilbur contorts to 'prove' he is radiant, exposing the performance behind the praise.
Item 3
Thrown away as useless; the dump's discarded junk is the unlikely source of Wilbur's saving words.
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Critical Thinking
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