Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
Chosen for Charlotte's creed, delivered in plain declaratives. Pressed to stop saying upsetting things, she explains instead: truth first ('I have to say what is true'), an honest concession ('not entirely happy about my diet'), necessity ('it's the way I'm made'), and then the long view — trapper mother, trapper grandmother, thousands of years of spiders laying for flies. The speech climbs from one spider's breakfast to a whole species' inheritance without ever raising its voice. Copying it gives practice with first-person argument: short claims, honest concessions, and a family history used as evidence.
It's true, and I have to say what is true. I am not entirely happy about my diet of flies and bugs, but it's the way I'm made. A spider has to pick up a living somehow or other, and I happen to be a t...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell the chapter with its timing intact: the wakeful night and the goose's drowsy clock, the hush before dawn, the failed search and the announcement that backfires, breakfast, and then — on her own schedule — 'Salutations!', the name, the fly demonstration, the argument about the web, and the verdict Wilbur falls asleep on. Note as you go which events Wilbur forces and which arrive on their own time.
Discussion Questions
- Within minutes of being seen for the first time, Charlotte takes her own measure out loud: 'Well, I am pretty. There's no denying that... I'm not as flashy as some, but I'll do.' Then she admits a weakness just as plainly: 'I've always been dreadfully near-sighted.' Why might White give Charlotte this exact, unembarrassed knowledge of her own strengths and limits? Use the words of her self-descriptions to explain what this way of talking about herself shows about her.
- In the middle of the friendly morning, the goose thinks a private thought: Wilbur 'doesn't even know what's going to happen to him around Christmastime; he has no idea that Mr. Zuckerman and Lurvy are plotting to kill him.' The book's darkest fact arrives between an egg-poke and a nap. Why might White plant the death-plot here, inside a chapter about finding a friend? Use the words of the goose's thought and the scene around it to explain what the placement does to the chapter's happiness.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Formal words of greeting — a fancy hello.
Item 2
The place where someone or something is.
Item 3
Fitting and proper for the occasion.
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Critical Thinking
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