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Copywork
About This Passage
Wilbur's second crash has just ended the experiment - tears, a grin from Templeton, and a spider who 'just sat quietly' before speaking. Charlotte's speech is a small masterpiece of honest comfort: the verdict first, the diagnosis in parallel ('You lack... and you lack...'), then the pivot - 'But cheer up' - that swings from what Wilbur is missing to what he already has. The closing question does not ask for an answer; it retires the worry.
"You can't spin a web, Wilbur, and I advise you to put the idea out of your mind. You lack two things needed for spinning a web." "What are they?" asked Wilbur, sadly. "You lack a set of spinnerets,...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Reconstruct the chapter as one unbroken afternoon-to-night: the anatomy lesson, the boast and its two-act failure, the verdict with its kind pivot, the bridge satire and the sedentary creed, the lamb's interruption and the sharp defense, twilight's catalog of sounds, the fear's return, the plan confessed to be young, the regimen, the trough comedy, and the volleyed good nights. Mark where the chapter's voice shifts from comedy to tenderness, and who is present, silent, for all of it.
Discussion Questions
- The chapter opens by seating a witness: 'Fern liked to sit nearby and watch. One afternoon she heard a most interesting conversation and witnessed a strange event.' It closes by sending her home 'her mind full of everything she had seen and heard.' Fern says nothing in between - she chuckles once, and watches. Why might the author frame the whole comic afternoon inside a silent child's watching? Use the details of the opening and closing lines to explain what Fern's quiet presence adds to the scenes she witnesses.
- Charlotte's harshest words about anyone in this chapter are aimed at people: they 'keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side,' and 'with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute.' The book hands its critique of humanity to a spider hanging in a barn doorway. What does the criticism gain by coming from her - a creature people would call insignificant? Use the words of the bridge speech and the details of how Charlotte actually lives to explain why the speaker matters as much as the speech.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
To do someone a favor; to be agreeably helpful.
Item 2
Quickly and a little anxiously; in a hurry.
Item 3
Got back to normal after a shock, fall, or illness.
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Critical Thinking
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