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Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for the narrator's boldest intervention: three sentences that step outside the story's time. 'Merely' files Wilbur's storm under ordinary weather; 'often go with' turns one pig's worry into everyone's; and then the prolepsis — 'she was to prove loyal and true to the very end' — promises the book's outcome whole chapters early. The passage trades surface suspense for trust and gains a deeper tension: the reader now carries what Wilbur must slowly learn. Copying it gives practice with narrative omniscience, balanced antithesis (bold exterior, kind heart), and the quiet authority of a storyteller who already knows the end.
Wilbur was merely suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend. In good time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her rather bold and cruel ext...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the chapter as a study in timing: the sleepless night and its small encounters, the hush before dawn, the failed summonses, and the meeting that happens only on the stranger's own schedule. Note who holds knowledge at each stage — who knows where the friend is, who knows what she eats, who knows what is coming at Christmastime — and end by naming the one character who knows least.
Discussion Questions
- When Wilbur finally sees his friend, the chapter is precise about her address: 'Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider.' She hangs above the place where everything enters and leaves the barn. Why might White place Charlotte there for this first meeting? Use the details of her position and Wilbur's discovery of her to explain what the location suggests about the kind of presence she has in the barn.
- Charlotte begins with 'Salutations!' and then explains that it is 'just my fancy way of saying hello.' Why might White introduce her with both the unusual greeting and the plain explanation? Use the words of the greeting and the explanation to explain what the contrast suggests about Charlotte.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
The outside of something — the surface a stranger sees first.
Item 2
Knowing no evil and suspecting none; unaware of harm, including harm to come.
Item 3
Causing pain without pity.
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Critical Thinking
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