Charlotte's Web — Chapter 4

About This Passage

E.B. White introduces Templeton in a paragraph of five sentences that is, quietly, a small master class in character exposition. The first sentence gives the rat a verb — 'crept stealthily' — and an architecture — 'a private tunnel.' The second sentence hangs the whole character on a single adjective: 'crafty.' The remaining three sentences justify the adjective by engineering: the tunnel is an example, the tunnel enables, the runways run all over the farm. The paragraph rewards imitation because it shows how a writer establishes a character by assigning one decisive word and then proving it three times in a row.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 4 with close attention to its structure. Begin with the anaphoric rain paragraph, move through Wilbur's elaborately detailed daily schedule, narrate each of the three refusals (the goose, the lamb, Templeton) as a distinct kind of loneliness, reach the low point of the forced medicine, and close with the unseen voice from the darkness. Where is the chapter's pivot, and how does E.B. White prepare it?

Discussion Questions

1. Wilbur's hour-by-hour plan — skim milk and crusts, a 'talk with Templeton' because it was 'better than nothing,' an hour to 'stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive' — is unusually specific for a children's book. Analyze how the precision of the list itself functions as a portrait of loneliness. What does Wilbur's inner life look like, and how does E.B. White reveal it without ever naming the feeling?
2. Examine the sequence of three refusals. The goose is preoccupied with her eggs; the lamb is actively unkind ('Pigs mean less than nothing to me'); Templeton does not even share the vocabulary of play. Why does E.B. White order them as he does, and what is the cumulative effect? What does each refusal reveal about a different kind of loneliness a young creature can face?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide