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Copywork
About This Passage
The opening of Chapter 3 is a catalogue of smells — an anaphoric accumulation ("It smelled of... it smelled of...") that trains the reader's senses before any action begins. E.B. White is doing something quietly sophisticated: grounding Wilbur's new world in concrete particulars so that the sentence about peace ("as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world") lands as a claim about a specific place, not a vague comfort. Copying the passage lets a writer feel how repetition becomes music and how a list can carry an argument.
The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a detailed retelling of Chapter 3. Begin with the barn catalogue and Wilbur's new living situation. Trace his boredom, the goose's temptation, the escape, the confused chase with contradictory advice, Mr. Zuckerman's patient lure, and Wilbur's final thought as he falls asleep.
Discussion Questions
- E.B. White opens the chapter with a sustained description of Zuckerman's barn — its smells, its seasons, the tools inside it, the swallows and children who share it — before he returns to Wilbur. What is he accomplishing with this architectural prelude? Why does the barn need its own description before the plot resumes?
- Wilbur says, "I'm less than two months old and I'm tired of living." This sentence is both comic and serious. Discuss how E.B. White uses the mismatch between Wilbur's young age and the weight of his complaint to produce a specific effect. What is the reader asked to feel, and what is the reader asked to understand about boredom, loneliness, and early life?
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Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
Sweat produced by a body, especially from heat, effort, or stress — used here of tired horses.
Item 2
Willing to endure delay, trouble, or discomfort without irritation or protest.
Item 3
Free from disturbance or alarm; marked by quiet, calm, and the absence of conflict.
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Critical Thinking
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