Charlotte's Web — Chapter 9

About This Passage

This passage is E. B. White practicing his quiet comic craft: the slow-motion precision of hesitated, jumped, glanced hastily, landed with a thump produces physical comedy that a child can laugh at and a pathfinder can study as the rhythm of failure. The Ooomp is written into the text itself, a one-word sound effect that shifts register mid-paragraph, and Charlotte's laugh is given its own sentence because the author wants the reader to hear the web sway.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 9 in order. Begin with the opening statement about the spider's delicate strands, move through Wilbur's boast and two failed jumps, through Charlotte's Queensborough Bridge speech and her sharp defense of Wilbur against the lamb, and end with the repeated Good nights across the darkness.

Discussion Questions

1. The author opens the chapter with a meditation on the spider's delicate but strong web, and only then moves into Wilbur's boast about being able to spin one. What does this opening establish, and how does the boast that follows it read differently because of what the narrator has told us first?
2. Charlotte refuses to correct Wilbur's boast directly, saying instead, Let's see you do it. What does this tactic reveal about Charlotte as a teacher, and how does the author use the two failed jumps to make the correction happen in Wilbur's body rather than in his ears?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide