Charlotte's Web Essay

Charlotte’s Web is a children’s book written by E. B. White. Elwyn Brooks “E. B.” White was an American essayist, author, and literary stylist, whose works appealed to readers of all ages, from children to adults, and received many accolades for his works. White wrote for fun, he loved writing, not for money.

As a child, he cared for a plethora of animals like birds, dogs, horses, rabbits, and others on the family farm. White is most known for writing the children's classics Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. His three children’s novels all take place in a world where animals speak and experience human emotions (Sims, 2011, para. 14).

In 1929, White wrote his first two books and married Katherine Sergeant Angell, The New Yorker’s first fiction editor (The Editors of The Encyclopædia Britannica, 2012, para. 2). In the mid 1930s, he and his wife purchased a farmhouse with a forty-acre farm on the coast of Maine. They had one son, Joel born in December 1930 (Rogers, 1979, para. 16).

White, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died October 1, 1985, in North Brooklin, Maine (Overbey, 2010, para. 8).

One morning E. B. White walked into the barn of his farm in Maine and saw a spider web. The web caught his attention with its elaborate loops and whorls. Weeks later he noticed that the spider was spinning an egg sac. He never saw the spider again, so he decided to care for the sac that soon tiny baby spiders emerged from. This is what inspired him to write Charlotte’s Web, White’s magical meditation on the passage of time, mortality, and the great gift of finding a true friend in the world (Corrigan, 2011, para. 1).

In the late 1940s, Charlotte’s Web was published. The story is about a spider that brings attract...

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...nd with each day he built a relationship with each of them. He did not like to betray a person or a creature, and he believed that it is the duty of the man to be reliable (Abraham, 2013, para. 2).

The story was made for children, but some maybe to young to understand the themes of the book. After reading the book over again, I really saw what White was writing and the themes of the story. The characters within the story, each with their own personality, create a tale about the significance in each theme. As White ends the story he states: “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and good writer. Charlotte was both” (White, 1952, pg 184). This is significant because without Charlotte’s ability to write, the heroic tale as we know, wouldn’t have been so. I believe that one can learn something by reading the book, and may become a better person.