Charlotte's Web — Chapter 17

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 17 in ten to twelve sentences. Move through its three structural movements: the sensory overture of arrival (Ferris wheel, music, the loudspeaker hailing 'a Pontiac car, license number H-2439,' children released with specific coins into the midway); the installation of Wilbur in a grassy shaded pen and Charlotte's dragline interview with Uncle; and the slow deceleration at midday — Charlotte's confession of fatigue, the oppressive heat, Lurvy's Indian blanket stretched as a tent over the truck, and the family's collective nap.

Discussion Questions

1. E. B. White opens Chapter 17 not with any character's interior life but with a barrage of specific sensory particulars — the Ferris wheel turning, the moistened dust of the race track, the smell of frying hamburgers, the sheep blatting, a loudspeaker hailing a particular Pontiac by license plate. Examine this opening as an implicit theory of how a place ought to be built for a reader. What does the author's refusal of summary in favor of radically specific particulars propose about the division of imaginative labor between writer and reader, and how does the technique prepare the reader's attention for Charlotte's own mode of inquiry later in the chapter?
2. The Arables' release of Fern and Avery — ceremonially precise coins, explicit curfews, Mrs. Arable's sigh and blown nose, Mr. Arable's considered 'they've got to grow up some time' — is given weight disproportionate to its plot function. Consider the scene as a meditation on the moral architecture of letting go. What does White propose about the simultaneous rational confidence and grieving tenderness that constitute healthy parental relinquishment, and why does he place this miniature handoff at the front of a chapter that is nominally about a pig contest?

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