Charlotte's Web — Chapter 22

Narration Prompt

Before the discussion, briefly retrace the chapter's arc: Wilbur's homecoming with the medal and the egg sac, the long winter of patient guardianship, the spring hatching of five hundred and fourteen spiders, the dramatic balloon departure of most on the warm updraft, the three daughters — Joy, Aranea, and Nellie — who stay, Wilbur's ceremonial pledge, White's beatitude cataloguing the barn, Fern's quiet disappearance from the animal world, and the book's closing tribute to Charlotte as both a true friend and a good writer.

Discussion Questions

1. White closes Wilbur's character arc through a winter of patient sac-tending — the text reports that he scoops a special place in the manure, warms the sac with his breath on the coldest nights, and that nothing else mattered. Analyze the author's decision to measure completed moral formation through unglamorous sustained attention rather than through any decisive heroic act. What theory of virtue does the chapter advance, and how does it stand in relation to classical heroic models, Aristotelian habituation, or Christian accounts of patient love?
2. Consider White's stylistic decision to give the departing baby spiders the adult register of We are aeronauts and we are going out into the world to make webs for ourselves. Analyze the ethic of love and leave-taking the author advances by refusing to sentimentalize the departure or to keep the children home for Wilbur's comfort. What philosophical claim about the proper shape of mature love is embedded in this refusal?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide