Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for moral weight and authorial craft at the chapter's hinge: E.B. White closes Wilbur's babyhood with one perfectly balanced sentence — happy days on one side of the comma, peaceful nights on the other — then breaks the idyll with a farmer's category. The definition sounds harmless ('a spring pig... simply means that he was born in springtime'), but the word 'simply' is doing quiet work: the label, not an argument, is what turns Fern's baby back into livestock that 'would have to be sold.' The two short sentences that follow set Fern's grief against her father's firmness without a word of commentary — the syntax itself stages the collision.
Every day was a happy day, and every night was peaceful. Wilbur was what farmers call a spring pig, which simply means that he was born in springtime. When he was five weeks old, Mr. Arable said he w...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter as the story of how Wilbur's life changes shape. Begin with Fern's feeding routine, follow Wilbur's moves from the kitchen box to the woodshed to the yard under the apple tree, and end with the phone call and Wilbur's move to Zuckerman's barn. Keep the order of the moves straight, and say what causes each one.
Discussion Questions
- Fern ties a bib on Wilbur, wheels him in the doll carriage, and pushes it slowly so as not to wake her 'infants.' Alongside this game, the same chapter shows Wilbur grunting when the bottle is empty, tunneling into the straw, and leaving the cold brook for the warm mud. Why do you think the narrator keeps placing these pig details inside Fern's baby game? Use the straw scene and the brook scene to explain what the reader gets to see about Wilbur that Fern's game does not show, and how that prepares us for Mr. Arable's announcement.
- Early in the chapter, Mr. Arable fixes a small yard specially for Wilbur under the apple tree and cuts a doorway in the box so Wilbur can walk in and out as he pleases. Five weeks later, the same father is 'firm': Wilbur 'has got to be sold.' Why can Mr. Arable be both the man who builds the yard and the man who insists on the sale? Use his own words — especially 'You have had your fun raising a baby pig' — and the detail that he had already sold Wilbur's ten brothers and sisters to explain how he has been seeing Wilbur all along.
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary
Item 1
Showing deep, devoted love, the way a worshipper looks at what he worships. Wilbur gazes up at Fern this way while she holds his bottle.
Item 2
Delighted as if by magic; under the spell of something wonderful. Watching Wilbur tunnel into the straw, Fern sees ordinary pig behavior as something marvelous.
Item 3
Freed from worry; set at ease. Fern's mind rests once she knows her 'baby' will sleep warm and covered in the straw.
+ 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