64 pages • 2-hour read
Charlotte's Web
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Symbols & Motifs
Coming of Age
All three of the story’s main characters, including Wilbur, Charlotte, and Fern, experience a coming of age between the springtime and the fall. Fern is eight years old when she adopts Wilbur as a piglet, and although she is still eight when summer ends, her priorities change immensely. Fern demonstrates maturity beyond her years when she cares for Wilbur and commits to him fully. By the time the County Fair happens in the fall, Fern is beginning to grow up. Her mother, once worried about Fern’s supposedly strange priorities, is relieved that her daughter is now more interested in boys than she is in Wilbur. Although Fern will always have a special place for Wilbur, she moves on from her preoccupation with him and the farm.
Wilbur begins his life as a tiny runt piglet being raised by Fern. Soon, he grows too big for her and is moved to the Zuckerman farm where he can be fed properly and live a pig’s life. Wilbur is forced to mature rapidly when he is separated from Fern for the first time, as he is now on his own. This proves challenging for him at first, since he is “a very young pig—not much more than a baby, really” (22). He makes a true friend in Charlotte, who supports him throughout his development. When Wilbur is young, he is easily scared, tense, and emotional. By fall, Wilbur is growing into a full-sized pig and is no longer the timid little creature he once was. He has learned how to be a good friend, about the nature of life and death, and about sacrifice and hard work. Furthermore, thanks to Charlotte, Wilbur lives for many years to come.
Charlotte experiences an entire life cycle in the time that she lives on the Zuckerman farm. Spiders often only live for a year, and Charlotte senses that she will die in the fall. She has a shorter life than the other animals, but is wiser than them, and accepts her eventual death with grace and dignity. Charlotte starts out as an independent spider who spends her days weaving and catching prey, and while she maintains those characteristics, she also develops a love for Wilbur that helps her “to lift up [her] life a trifle” (164) and have a sense of purpose that she otherwise would not have. Charlotte’s short but meaningful life is a symbol of the impermanence and beauty of life.
Seasons
The changing of the seasons is a significant event on a farm, and the Zuckerman farm is no exception. Wilbur is born in early spring and is therefore “what farmers call a spring pig” (12). Much like the season of his birth, it is the springtime of Wilbur’s life. Everything is full of beauty, innocence, and joy, and he does not worry about the future. When Wilbur moves to the Zuckerman farm, the birds announce the coming of summer and Wilbur hears that he may be slaughtered in the winter. A sense of existential dread comes over him, and he is unable to fully shake it until his future is secured that fall. As the fall sets in, the animals and natural surroundings begin reacting to the coming of winter. Even “a little maple tree in the swamp heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety” (114). The fall itself is ushered in by the crickets chirping, “over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying” (113), and much like the summer itself, Charlotte’s life is near its end. She knows this about herself and tells Wilbur that she regrets the fact that she will never see her egg sac hatch. After Charlotte dies, winter passes with Wilbur still alive, and the spring comes again. A full cycle of seasons has passed in Wilbur’s life, and he is now a year old. The seasons act in parallel with Wilbur and Fern’s coming of age, as well as with the natural end to Charlotte’s short life as a spider.
Food and the Barn
Food is a symbol of comfort, safety, and survival in Charlotte’s Web. Whenever Wilbur is fed, it acts as an illustration of his continued survival, and Charlotte’s ever-growing success in fooling the humans enough to love Wilbur and keep him alive for good. Because food means life, Wilbur finds deep comfort and relief in being fed and considers it a representation of his being safe and cared for on the farm. When he escapes his pen at the encouragement of the goose, he is quickly lured back into security and away from freedom by the temptation of delicious “warm slops” (22). Food is home to Wilbur, and he chooses to stay where food is guaranteed. Templeton agrees with Wilbur’s sentiments about food, but he takes it to a gluttonous degree, eventually getting so large that he is “as big as a young woodchuck” (175). A great deal of Charlotte’s time is spent weaving webs and fooling bugs into landing in them, then wrapping them up, sedating them, and draining their blood. Wilbur finds this grotesque but learns to understand that it is just a spider’s way. Their discussions over food are one of the ways that Charlotte and Wilbur bond, and how Wilbur and Charlotte come to convince Templeton to help them throughout the summer. By the time the County Fair comes to town, Wilbur is quite large and overfed. Since he is a pig, he is contented by this fact, and begins to see himself as the “sensational” (91) pig that he is.
The barn acts as a sister-symbol to food, providing comfort, warmth, and safety to the animals. It’s also the setting where the friendship between Wilbur and Charlotte blossoms. When Wilbur is first brought to the Zuckerman farm, he is anxious about his new surroundings. The goose encourages him to escape, and Wilbur cannot help but miss the security of the farm almost instantly. He soon grows lonely when Fern is not around, although she visits almost daily, and begins asking other animals to play with him. None oblige, but then a voice from the barn doorway offers to be his friend: Charlotte. Wilbur and Charlotte develop a close bond in the barn together, discussing the nature of life, their habits and everything in between. It is in the barn that Charlotte makes her home, and it is there that she comes up with the idea to save Wilbur’s life. The barn thus ends up being the setting for “the miracle” (77) of the words in the web. The barn is also the place where the goslings are born and raised, where Templeton makes his home, and where Fern comes to visit and sit every day throughout the summer.
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