Charlotte's Web — Chapter 4

About This Passage

E.B. White lets the low point of Wilbur's day build across three sentences. Each one turns the screw a little further — first the unfair sight of Templeton eating Wilbur's breakfast, then the cold fact of the rain, then the triple adjective 'Friendless, dejected, and hungry' that collapses Wilbur into the manure. The short sentences that follow — Lurvy's report to Mr. Zuckerman — are deliberately flat, as if the grown-ups around Wilbur can only see 'something wrong with that pig' rather than the loneliness the reader now feels.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 4 with attention to its structure. Begin with the rainy morning and Wilbur's careful daily plan. Narrate each of the three refusals — the goose with her eggs, the lamb who calls pigs 'less than nothing,' and Templeton who does not know the meaning of 'play.' End with the forced medicine and the thin, pleasant voice from the darkness. Where does the chapter's turning point come, and how can you tell?

Discussion Questions

1. Wilbur's daily plan is unusually specific — breakfast menus, an hour with Templeton, time to 'stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.' What in the story shows you that the plan is more about loneliness than about food? How does E.B. White reveal a lonely mind through what it schedules?
2. Compare the goose's refusal, the lamb's refusal, and Templeton's refusal. What makes you think E.B. White ordered them the way he did — busy goose first, mean lamb second, gluttonous rat third? What does each refusal reveal about a different kind of loneliness?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide