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Copywork
About This Passage
White caps the public ceremony with a flat, almost dry aphorism, 'It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people,' naming plainly the very public pleasure the chapter has staged. The generalization is sincere yet faintly ironic, since the chapter has just shown the real winner, Charlotte, taking her triumph alone and unseen in the pigpen. Copying it shows how a narrator can step outside the action to state a worldly truth that the surrounding scene quietly complicates.
A great feeling of happiness swept over the Zuckermans and the Arables. This was the greatest moment in Mr. Zuckerman's life. It is deeply satisfying to win a prize in front of a lot of people.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the chapter from the loud speaker's announcement through the truck's return to the pigpen. Then name the central tension White develops between the public ceremony around Wilbur and Charlotte's private hour in the pigpen, and assess how he holds the two together.
Discussion Questions
- White calls this Charlotte's 'hour of triumph,' though it is Wilbur who stands before the cheering crowd. Construct an argument about why the chapter locates the triumph with the silent, unseen Charlotte rather than the pig in the ring. Use the details of Charlotte's scene and Wilbur's to support your reasoning.
- The announcer insists the writing came from 'supernatural forces' and that 'spiders cannot write,' while Charlotte, the true author, answers, 'Oh, they can't, can't they?' Analyze what White achieves by juxtaposing the announcer's confident voice with Charlotte's wry reply. Use the details of what each says to support your answer.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Grandly self-important and inflated in manner; the register of the loud speaker's announcement.
Item 2
Attributed to forces beyond the natural world; the announcer's verdict on the web writing.
Item 3
A remarkable occurrence offered up for study; what learned men come to observe at the pigpen.
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Critical Thinking
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