Charlotte's Web — Chapter 4

About This Passage

This is E.B. White's full character exposition for Templeton — six sentences that introduce a figure who will be important for the rest of the novel. The paragraph is built on a classical structure: thesis, support, extension. Sentence one gives Templeton a verb ('crept stealthily') and an architecture ('a private tunnel'). Sentence two hangs the whole character on one adjective: 'crafty.' Sentences three through six justify the adjective through engineering — the tunnel as example, the tunnel as enabler, the runways across the farm, the diurnal inversion ('abroad only after dark'). Notice how the paragraph moves from singular ('a private tunnel') to plural ('tunnels and runways all over Mr. Zuckerman's farm'): Templeton's craftiness scales in the space of a page.

Narration Prompt

Give an analytical retelling of Chapter 4. Begin with E.B. White's extended anaphoric rain paragraph, trace the function of Wilbur's over-detailed daily plan as an interior portrait, analyze the three refusals (the goose, the lamb, Templeton) as a structured descent, consider Wilbur's philosophical monologue on 'less than nothing' as an intellectual act inside loneliness, and close with the delayed, disembodied arrival of the voice. What does the chapter argue about the relationship between loneliness and the life of the mind?

Discussion Questions

1. E.B. White opens Chapter 4 with an extended anaphora — 'Rain fell... Rain fell... Rain fell... Rain spattered' — before any character speaks. Analyze this rhetorical opening against the parallel anaphoric opening of Chapter 3 ('It smelled of... It smelled of...'). What is E.B. White doing structurally by twinning these overtures, and what is the argumentative effect of letting weather and olfactory atmosphere precede action in both chapters? How do the two openings together constitute a pedagogy of attention?
2. Wilbur's hour-by-hour plan is one of the most unusual interiors in American children's literature: breakfast menus down to 'bits of Shredded Wheat,' a scheduled hour 'to have a talk with Templeton' justified only as 'better than nothing,' and an hour set aside 'to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.' Read the plan as a prose portrait of loneliness. How does the text reveal, through specificity alone, an interior that cannot bear unstructured time? What does E.B. White gain by refusing the word 'lonely' until paragraphs later, when the rain arrives?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide