Charlotte's Web — Chapter 6

About This Passage

White builds Templeton's moral portrait by accumulation: nine parallel negations, one after the other, each narrower and more specific than the last, ending in the flat no anything. Copying the passage forces the student to feel how rhythm and syntax can deliver a judgment that a simple adjective never could, and the two short following sentences demonstrate how White lands a long figure with compact, plain prose.

Narration Prompt

In four or five sentences, summarize the arc of Chapter 6 from the pastoral opening through the goslings' hatching to the chapter's closing image of Mr. Zuckerman counting seven.

Discussion Questions

1. When the goose rebukes Charlotte's Seven is a lucky number with Luck had nothing to do with this. It was good management and hard work, what competing ideas about how good outcomes are produced are the two characters voicing, and which does the chapter ultimately seem to side with?
2. Charlotte announces the goslings' arrival with highly formal diction — gratified, unremitting effort, sincere congratulations — while the goose replies with a plain Thank you, thank you, thank you. What does this contrast between registers tell us about how each character inhabits the barn and the novel?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide