9/21/10

Charlotte's web. -Connecting Annotations

What I noticed a lot in Charlotte's web, is E.B.White's constant switching from "Charlotte" to "The spider." I noticed he would use her name when she was talking, almost as if it was like a mask. In the way that, he would mask the part that Charlotte is a spider so that his reader will associate the character Charlotte as more of a personality, or human, rather than an animal. I think E.B.White does this to use Charlotte as a microphone in the book. And by making Charlotte more of a character without a  face, doing so would be more discrete.
On the other hand; when Charlotte would be doing something he would mostly use "The spider" as if to paint a better picture in your head and for the reader to remind themselves she's a spider. and give the reader an image of a grey spider (Say) spinning a web.
I also noticed E.B.White did this with Templeton. when he wanted his reader to imagine Templeton as a rat, he would say "The rat". What i noticed about this was that when E.B.White wanted you to think of a rat, he would usually show rat characteristics, every time there was the word rat, there was something like a small fact about rats and what rats do. Same with Charlotte. Whenever Templeton was talking and showing emotion that showed more of what type of a person Templeton is, E.B.White would use "Templeton"
I'm guessing these are the words E.B.White wanted you to associate with
Templeton: mean, sneaky and annoying
Rats: animals that live in sewers, scavengers, hoarder's, make nests.
Charlotte: mother figure, nice, smart, pretty, a good friend
Spider: peaceful, smart, pretty, we need them to survive. They create a balance of insects.
Pig: animal on a farm.
Fern: Wilbur's first mother figure, a good fiend. lives on a farm, but doesn't always understand farm way of life.
Little girl: animal lover, raised a pig.


Going off topic, i noticed that on the summary on the back of my book said "These are the words in Charlotte's spider web, high in the barn. Her spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named
Wilbur, as well as the feelings of a little girl named Fern. . .who loves Wilbur, too. Their love has been shared by millions of readers.

Two things i noticed:

1. I never knew that the spiderweb was talking about Fern as well as Wilbur. And i argue against it because it was just a scam to trick the humans.
2. The blurg says "little pig named Wilbur" and "little girl named Fern"
I see how this can be like a social status thing, but i still argue against it because Fern and Wilbur seemed to be timeless to me, and to really imagine them as "little" would be weird.
I wounder if E.B.White wrote this blurg.

1 comment:

  1. Sabrina,
    I totally agree with everything you said. I think your idea is very clever, it's something I never thought of while reading the book. I did notice that White uses Charlotte as a microphone and I agree that a spider is thought of as motherly and smart. I think White used Charlotte as the microphone because he might have felt that readers would respond well and listen to a smart motherlike character. I am wondering what you mean by "the spider web was talking about Fern as well as Wilbur"? I feel like you have a good idea it's just a little unclear. I also like how you say Charlotte is a mask. I really like your thoughts and connections to the book.

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