In
her foreword for the 60th Anniversary edition of E.B. White’s
children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, multiple
Newbery Medal-winner Kate DiCamillo (Because
of Winn-Dixie; The Tale of Despereaux) writes that White “loved barns and
pastures, dumps and fairgrounds, ponds and kitchens. He loved pigs and sheep
and geese and spiders” (vi). He also loved subjects as diverse as “rain,
harnesses, pitchforks, springtime, fall, spiderwebs, monkey wrenches and Ferris
wheels” (vi). Because of this love for the common bits of everyday life, “every
word of this book shows us how we can bear the triumphs and despairs, the
wonders and the heartbreaks, the small and large glories and tragedies of being
here” (vi). In case the reader didn’t catch this aspect on the first reading,
DiCamillo is humorously pointing out that another thing White loved was
creating atmosphere-enhancing lists, which can be seen everywhere from the
description of farm implements and junk cluttering Zuckerman’s barn (13-14) to
Fern and Avery’s summer activities (42-44) to the ingredients of the meals
Wilbur and Templeton consume (too many examples to mention all of them).
Charlotte’s Web is a novel about
friendship, which also says a lot about good writing, while also being about
growing up and facing death, of which there is plenty on a farm. In 1947 White
wrote an essay outlining the “Death of a Pig,” published in the January 1948
issue of The Atlantic Monthly. White
begins this essay by stating that the traditional farming practice of
butchering a hog for wintertime is natural and accepted without question: “It
is a tragedy enacted on most farms with perfect fidelity to the original
script. The murder, being premeditated, is in the first degree but is quick and
skillful, and the smoked bacon and ham provide a ceremonial ending whose
fitness is seldom questioned” (Essays of
E.B. White 17). On this specific occasion, one ad-lib interrupted that ancient
script’s flow – the pig never showed up for his last supper: “I found myself
suddenly cast into the role of pig’s [sic] friend and physician – I had a
presentiment that the play would never regain its balance and that my
sympathies were now wholly with the pig” (17). This particular pig died of a
sickness a short time later, despite White’s best efforts of swine-nursing, and
thus depriving him of tasty ham and sausage. But soon afterward he began work
on his second children’s novel, which starred a pig protagonist.
Of course, like his earlier children’s novel Stuart Little and his later children’s
novel The Trumpet of the Swan, the
animals in Charlotte’s Web can speak
English. Can animals really talk?
It’s a popular idea in the minds of many, and the wise Dr. Dorian doesn’t
completely rule out the possibility when talking with Mrs. Arable: “I have
never heard an animal say anything. But that proves nothing. It is quite
possible that an animal has spoken civilly to me and hat I didn’t catch the
remark because I wasn’t paying attention” (110). Perhaps White was consciously
echoing the words of G.K. Chesterton from Chesterton’s famous defense of fairy
tales in “The Ethics of Elfland,” part of his book Orthodoxy:
I have always been
more inclined to believe the ruck of hardworking people than to believe that
special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the
fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the
clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would
always trust the old wives’ tales against the old maids’ facts. (Orthodoxy 53-54)
Still, facts must be dealt with and arranged appropriately.
And as Melissa R. Cordell explains in an article on the backstory of Charlotte for the October 2008 issue of
children’s magazine Highlights, White
“filled a folder with sketches of spiders and notes about spiders at work”
(32), and a lot of these notes wove themselves into the tale, including
“Charlotte’s description of the seven parts of her leg, what happened when
Charlotte’s children hatched, and how her foundation lines differed from her
snare lines” (33). College professor Sue Misheff summarizes the work in her
1998 essay “Beneath the Web and Over the Stream,” for the academic journal Children’s Literature in Education, by
saying, “Within this fantasy lives a very down-to-earth spider who weaves a bit
of magic into her otherwise realistic web which essentially saves her friend
from certain extinction” (133).
Chesterton
would agree that a spider’s web is magical; when queried with such unanswerable
questions children wonder, such as why birds lay eggs or gravity makes apples
fall in autumn, “we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if
Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at
twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic”
(quoted in Elfland 57). So would Dr. Dorian, though he uses different language:
“A young spider knows how to spin a web without any instruction from anybody.
Don’t you regard that as a miracle?” (White, Charlotte 110)
Another
everyday miracle for any writer is having a good editor, and most people in
general would considered blessed with a spouse they could both work well and
get along with. For White, his wife Katharine filled both of these roles
admirably, though she did not officially edit his work. As he wrote in a March
1954 letter to a little girl named Shirley Wiley, “My wife is an editor. An
editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do, but who has
escaped the terrible desire to write” (Letters
358). And writers need editors for the simple reason that White cited when
replying to a student’s query: “I can’t explain myself. Everything about me is
mysterious to me and I do make any strong effort to solve the puzzle” (Letters 372).
Still another everyday miracle is the concept of stories
themselves, and the immense power they hold. Western author Louis L’Amour said
of them in “In the Beginning, There Was the Story…”, a short essay from his
reference work The Sackett Companion:
“The
story was man’s first and best means of transmitting knowledge or information,
of preparing the child as well as the adult for what might come” (261). White
uses the power of story, in part, to model what desirable behavior looks like
and educate readers through new vocabulary, while keeping his adult viewpoint
that sees humor in the commonplace. As Charlotte says to Templeton on page 140,
“’Humble’ has two meanings. It means ‘not proud’ and it means ‘near the
ground.’ That’s Wilbur all over.” In this approach, White creates what Misheff
calls “a safe space created by a reasoned approach to a problem” (Misheff 138).
Even though Charlotte dies, because death is inevitable for all
creatures, life goes on for Wilbur, and he must learn to deal with the pain in
order to grow and mature (Misheff 137). DiCamillo says this is part of
Charlotte’s promise to Wilbur, in addition to being White’s promise to his
readers: “Things will continue, life will go on. It will be beautiful, astonishing,
heartbreaking. And as long as you keep your eyes and heart open to the wonder
of it, as long as you love, it will be okay” (Foreword vii). This is a very
important lesson to learn, which can be taught somewhat by sitting at the
typewriter and bleeding, so sayeth the Hemingway quote familiar to nearly all
English majors. Life’s experiences will teach this lesson to the readers in one
way or another at some point in their lives, but books like this one can play
an early role in understanding this lesson, which is part of why children’s
literature possibly occupies the highest place in storytelling, which in my
opinion is the highest form of teaching tools in existence.
White also has quite a bit to say about the importance of good writing
in general, not to mention common sense, throughout this work. But in terms of
finding out what this advice is, we must study his actual words. “If you are
engaged in writing a theme about my works, I think your best bet is to read
them and say what you think about them,” was the advice he gave a high school student
named Arthur Hudson (White, Letters 372).
So that is what I tried to do.
There is the main plot device of the words “SOME PIG,” “TERRIFIC,”
“RADIANT” and “HUMBLE” appearing in the threads of Charlotte A. Cavatica’s webs
in Zuckerman’s barn and the fairgrounds, of course. No one understands how
words could appear in a spider’s web, because it seems utterly fantastic. But
again, Dr. Dorian serves as a voice of reason: “I don’t understand it…None of
us do. I’m a doctor. Doctors are supposed to understand everything. But I don’t
understand everything, and I don’t intend to let it worry me” (108-10). Since
“doctor” comes from the Latin “to teach,” this bit of wordplay in that
statement about “having to understand everything” is doubly worthwhile. After
all, isn’t part of the reason that professors and teachers continue to seek out
new perspectives and knowledge of their subjects because they wish to learn
more? And if we tried to understand
everything, we would quickly go crazy, an observation which Chesterton expands
upon in his earlier Orthodoxy essays
“The Maniac” and “The Suicide of Thought.”
Another bit of humorous observation about writing occurs during the
initial barn-wide planning meeting, where Wilbur protests that he’s not terrific, only to be quickly
overruled by Charlotte’s snarky-yet-sensible reply: “That doesn’t make a particle
of difference. Not a particle. People believe almost anything they see in
print” (89). This is sadly true, and can be seen by reading the political
coverage in newspapers or on Facebook. People are quite easy to fool.
In an essay remembering his Cornell professor William Strunk, White
describes his own process of writing this way: “I write by ear, always with
difficulty and seldom with any notion of what is taking place under the hood” (White,
Essays 256). Is that comment a little
strange, coming from the editor/co-author (with Strunk) of The Elements of Style, one of the most influential books on writing
in history? Kind of. But at the end of the day, the words that White hammered
out just worked. They connected with
people, and explained clearly the simple, often-forgotten parts of life’s daily
existence in a rural setting. And that’s what counts. Perhaps with the closing
lines, he was hoping they could be his epitaph: “It is not often that someone
comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both” (184).
I know that I would be honored to have people say about me.
Works
Cited
Chesterton, G.K.
“The Ethics of Elfland.” 1908. Orthodoxy.
Ignatius Press, pp. 51-70, 1995.
DiCamillo, Kate.
Foreword by Kate DiCamillo. Charlotte’s
Web, by E.B. White. 60th Anniversary edition. Illus. Garth
Williams. 1952, HarperCollins, 2012, pp. v-vii.
Cordell, Melinda
R. “E.B. White and His Spiders.” Illus. Meredith Johnson. Highlights for Children, Vol. 63, No. 10, October 2008, pp. 32-33.
EBSCO. Accessed on 28 September 2016. Web.
L’Amour, Louis.
“In the Beginning, There Was the Story…” The
Sackett Companion. Bantam Books, pp. 261-262, 1988.
Misheff, Sue.
“Beneath the Web and Under the Stream: The Search for Safe Places in Charlotte’s Web and Bridge to Terbithia.” Children’s
Literature in Education, vol. 29, No. 3, 1998, pp. 131-141. EBSCO. Accessed on 29 September 2016. Web.
White, E.B. Charlotte’s Web. 60th
Anniversary edition. Illus. Garth Williams. 1952, HarperCollins, 2012.
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“Death of a Pig.” The Atlantic Monthly, January
1948. The Essays of E.B. White, 1977.
Harper Colophon Books, pp. 17-25, 1979.
--------------. “Will Strunk.” 1957.
The Essays of E.B. White, 1977.
Harper Colophon Books, pp. 256-262, 1979.
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“To Arthur Hudson.” 1 April 1955. Letters
of E.B. White, Revised Edition, 2006. Edited by Dorothy Lorrano Guth and
Martha White. Harper Perennial, p. 372,
2007.
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“To Shirley Wiley.” 30 March 1954. Letters
of E.B. White, Revised Edition, 2006. Edited by Dorothy Lorrano Guth and
Martha White. Harper Perennial, p. 358,
2007.
