Charlotte's Web — Chapter 16

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 16 in ten to twelve sentences, attending to structure rather than plot summary alone: the opening dream-prologue, the buttermilk bath, Charlotte's decision to travel, the old sheep's persuasion of Templeton, the loading of the crate (with stowaways), Wilbur's near-fainting at Mr. Arable's mention of 'ham and bacon,' and the author's closing triad about what the humans did and did not see.

Discussion Questions

1. E. B. White opens the chapter not with action but with six brief dreams — Avery, Fern, Lurvy, Mr. Zuckerman, Mrs. Zuckerman, and then a glance at Charlotte awake in the barn. Examine this dream-prologue as a formal choice. What theory of characterization does White advance by granting the dream the status of primary evidence about the self, and how does this opening shape the reader's relation to the chapter's later drama?
2. The old sheep's persuasion of Templeton operates on a principle that Charlotte's rhetoric elsewhere does not use — the sheep meets Templeton inside his own vocabulary of appetite, unvarnished and undiluted. Consider this scene as a miniature treatise on the ethics of rhetoric: is there a morally meaningful difference between 'meeting the listener where he is' and 'flattering his lowest motives,' and where does the chapter locate that line?

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