Reading Charlotte’s Web: On Friendship, Beauty and Writing
By Maria Jerinic
When I was a child, I received an E.B White boxed set: Charlotte’s Web, Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little. Charlotte’s Web became, hands-down, my favorite (although I told everyone it was Trumpet of the Swan because somehow I thought I was bucking literary trends). I read Charlotte’s Web so many times that the binding cracked, pages came loose, hot chocolate stains spread across the cover.
Eventually I discovered the 1973 animated version. In those days before cable and VCRs, it ran on a local television, usually around Thanksgiving. My sisters and I never missed it.
And so, E.B. White and Wilbur and Charlotte became pillars of my childhood.
One recent Thanksgiving my children, who were about 10, 12 and 14 years old, came across the animated movie while flipping stations. We all stopped what we were doing, immediately absorbed by Wilbur’s panic, tempered by his protestations of love and devotion for Charlotte and Charlotte’s wise soothing counsel. During the commercial break, my kids pestered me with questions. Why would Charlotte not return to the farm? Why was Templeton so difficult? How did Wilbur come to be so special?
“It’s in the book,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”
Blank looks.
“Haven’t you read it?” I asked.
Apparently only my first child had read it, but he forgot everything. He also was the only one to have seen the full film because we used to have an old VCR and cassette copy; it had been that long ago.
How was this possible? This book that had meant so much to me – how had I not shared it with them? How had I allowed them to teeter into adolescence without absorbing it?
The shock only intensified. I went looking for my copy. I could not find the book! Was it possible that I didn’t have it in the house? What had happened to my box set? I had packed up and hauled across country many books from my childhood, and I had added new copies of some. I counted two different versions of the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings but no Charlotte’s Web.
I’m sure you’re not surprised that I immediately bought a new copy, the 60th Anniversary edition. Initially, my reading experience was infused with nostalgia. The Garth Williams’ illustrations were so familiar. So was White’s prose. There were complete sentences that jumped out at me, and I finished them in my mind before I read them. I remembered nodding over those lines as a child. I nodded again.
However, as I read on, something else took over. Something magical happened. I began to see just how wise and inspiring White’s novel is. I began to realize to what extent this novel had formed my adult self.
Consider the moving celebration of friendship: “Wilbur didn’t want food, he wanted love. He wanted a friend – someone who would play with him.” Or this one: “No pig ever had truer friends, and he realized that friendship is one of the most satisfying things in the world.” And this one: “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing…. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”
And of course, the novel’s final words: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both.”
As a child, I understood Charlotte’s Web is a novel about friendship. Charlotte and Wilbur – their bond saves his life. Their bond allows her to be remembered. However, reading it as an adult with three tweens of my own, I began to see that White offers us critical advice: friendships save our lives and make those lives meaningful. Writing helps too. Put those two things together, writing and friendship, and you have some powerful armor to protect you as you wage life’s battles.
As an adult, I have been preoccupied with friendship and of course, writing. When I count the blessings in my life – my many friends rank high. When I count the frustrations in my life, I fret over the demands of adult life, and how they seem to prevent me from nurturing these friendships. I find myself searching for books and films that explore friendship; I bemoan our culture’s preoccupation with romantic love at the expense of this seemingly less dramatic bond. I talk to my writing students about historical constructions of friendship. I write about my friends, and in doing so I realize that I believe our friends are our heroes.
I wonder, was E.B. White responsible for all of this?
Another reading surprise – White’s cataloging of the beauties of the world. His narrator gushes over the small details that promise to enhance our daily lives if only we too would pay attention: “Wilbur heard the trill of the tree toad and the occasional slamming of the kitchen door. All these sounds made him feel comfortable and happy, for he loved life and loved to be a part of the world on a summer evening.”
Of the friends’ home, the narrator muses, “The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell – as though nothing bad could ever happen again in the world.” Joy and peace to be found in the barnyard – consider how the prosaic becomes beautiful through its ability to comfort. Even the scent of manure soothes and the description of a pig’s slops assumes a poetic quality:
"It was a delicious meal – skim milk, wheat middlings, leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello."
This detailed list evokes smell, sight, even taste while triggering memories. That inclusion of squash and toast and raspberry jello suggests a party, a celebration, a time for play.
I’ve read enough of and on White to know that he was not some relentless Pollyanna, that he struggled with life’s terrors. Certainly Charlotte’s Web depicts crippling fear and heartbreaking loss, but the depictions are framed by glorious praise for the world that surrounds us.
This was not a point I remember from my childhood reading experience. However, now, after re-reading the novel as a sometimes grumpy, frequently tired middle-aged adult who resents living in the desert, I try to force myself each day to recognize one thing I might find beautiful in this climate. For example, there’s the Las Vegas March sun and breeze, infused by the scent of the flowering plants, a gift before our world becomes unbearably hot. The view down my street from a certain angle of snowcapped mountains framing the California Peppers, which bow down under their burden of rare desert greenery. And sometimes, I take this practice inside, to consider my life in uninspiring late twentieth century classrooms. Sometimes I can ignore the lack of windows, color, and let’s face it, character. Instead, I see the smile on my student’s face when she realizes she's had an insight about a novel and is willing to share it. I see the way my students open up to each other and in their writing, share intimate thoughts, insights that make them vulnerable and that they listen to their classmates’ words with sensitivity and grace.
These beauties in my life -- I have begun to chant a list of them out loud as I drive to work. I carry a journal around with me and sometimes write them down as I sit in the car waiting to pick up my daughter from school or my son from guitar lessons. I remind myself: despite the rigors of my daily schedule and some looming terrors, I can feel gladness.
This is what I hope Charlotte’s Web will give my children: a way to manage the sad struggles in the world -- through friendship, a focus on beauty and of course, writing.