E.B. White on Why He Wrote Charlotte's Web

[jimmy olsen]

I can just imagine some of your reactions to the spider revelation! 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/06/e_b_white_on_why_he_wrote_charlotte_s_web_don_t_double_cross_a_pig.html

E.B. White on Why He Wrote Charlotte's Web

By Emily Bazelon
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2013, at 11:16 AM

The first line of Charlotte's Web is about preventing a murder. "Where's Papa going with that ax?" Fern asks her mother. When she learns that he's going to the hoghouse to kill the runt of a litter born the night before, she chases her father down and talks him out of it. "This is the most terrible case of injustice I ever heard of," she says.

That note of urgency, and farm life realism, courses through the book, giving it the energy that has made it such an eternally beloved, indispensable classic.  Now we know that's just what E.B. White, the author, intended. In a letter to his editor, Ursula Nordstrom, written in September 1952, a few weeks before the book was published, and posted recently on Letters of Note, White wrote:

A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals, because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always. I have kept several pigs, starting them in spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing. I do not like to betray a person or a creature, and I tend to agree with Mr. E.M. Forster that in these times the duty of a man, above all else, is to be reliable. It used to be clear to me, slopping a pig, that as far as the pig was concerned I could not be counted on, and this, as I say, troubled me. Anyway, the theme of "Charlotte's Web" is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.

White also defended spiders—in particular, Charlotte's real-life namesake, whom he watched spin a sac for her eggs at his place in the country, and then toted off to New York:

A few days later, when it was time to return to New York, not wishing to part with my spider, I took a razor blade, cut the sac adrift from the underside of the shed roof, put spider and sac in a candy box, and carried them to town. I tossed the box on my dresser. Some weeks later I was surprised and pleased to find that Charlotte's daughters were emerging from the air holes in the cover of the box. They strung tiny lines from my comb to my brush, from my brush to my mirror, and from my mirror to my nail scissors. They were very busy and almost invisible, they were so small. We all lived together happily for a couple of weeks, and then somebody whose duty it was to dust my dresser balked, and I broke up the show.

White ends by saying that he hasn't told Nordstrom why he wrote the book "but I haven't told you why I sneeze, either. A book is a sneeze." It's a delightful metaphor. But in fact, I think White has told us why he wrote Charlotte's Web. He wanted to make children, and their parents, think about what it means to raise animals only to butcher them. And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

[The Brain]

A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals

[garbon]

And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

Nope.

[CountDeMoney]

And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

Nope.

Yeah, fuck that.  I'm all about letting animals valuable to the ecosystem like spiders do their thing but if it winds up in my bedroom, well, that's just going to be a bad road game for it.

[Eddie Teach]

Herbivores = food

[Ideologue]

And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

Nope.

Yeah, fuck that.  I'm all about letting animals valuable to the ecosystem like spiders do their thing but if it winds up in my bedroom, well, that's just going to be a bad road game for it.

Indeed.  As much as I appreciate and agree with his weenie message viz. pigs, for spiders there can be no shelter and those who offer succor to such creatures are traitors to the human species.  If I see one talk or write messages in its web, perhaps I'll reconsider.

[garbon]

And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

Nope.

Yeah, fuck that.  I'm all about letting animals valuable to the ecosystem like spiders do their thing but if it winds up in my bedroom, well, that's just going to be a bad road game for it.

Indeed.  As much as I appreciate and agree with his weenie message viz. pigs, for spiders there can be no shelter and those who offer succor to such creatures are traitors to the human species.  If I see one talk or write messages in its web, perhaps I'll reconsider.

That said, I'm actually fine if they want to live in the same building (somewhat similar to my approach to roaches now that I live in the city ) - just don't leave any evidence that you exist and stay out of my field of vision.

[Ideologue]

It's weapons free for roaches.  Smashed one from across the room with a plastic cup a couple of days ago.  At the same time, they're not terribly scary.

The arthropods that really freak me out, and I'd happily consider DDTing the whole place for, are house centipedes.  Had them bad in an old apartment, but I've seen two or three here.  Those fuckers, while disturbing to look at, are actually pretty innocuous (they can bite but are not venomous) and in general they're of a cautious disposition, so they do their best to stay in the edges of rooms.  Unfortunately, they also consider the ceiling to be an "edge."  And sometimes they loose their footing.

[Malthus]

And why we should consider letting that spider in our bedroom live.

Nope.

Yeah, fuck that.  I'm all about letting animals valuable to the ecosystem like spiders do their thing but if it winds up in my bedroom, well, that's just going to be a bad road game for it.

Indeed.  As much as I appreciate and agree with his weenie message viz. pigs, for spiders there can be no shelter and those who offer succor to such creatures are traitors to the human species.  If I see one talk or write messages in its web, perhaps I'll reconsider.

The hive has noted. The suicide drones have been alerted for retaliation.

That odd taste in your mouth when you wake up?

Spider. 

[Ideologue]

What the hell is a "spider hive"?

[Malthus]

It's weapons free for roaches.  Smashed one from across the room with a plastic cup a couple of days ago.  At the same time, they're not terribly scary.

What really bug me and I'd happily consider DDTing the whole place for are house centipedes.  Had them bad in an old apartment, but I've seen two or three here.  Those fuckers, while disturbing to look at, are actually pretty innocuous (they can bite but are not venomous) and in general they're of a cautious disposition, so they do their best to stay in the edges of rooms.  Unfortunately, they also consider the ceiling to be an "edge."  And sometimes they loose their footing.

We had 3-4 inch ones living in the clay studeo I worked in as a young fella. I pegged one with a blob of wet clay that must have been a world record size.

Put the clay - plus imbedded corpse - on a drying rack in the back room and forgot about it. A year later, one of the other workers picked it up ... I heard the scream three rooms away. 

[derspiess]

If I see one talk or write messages in its web, perhaps I'll reconsider.

[CountDeMoney]

 

[Malthus]

What the hell is a "spider hive"?

Oh, you will find out. You will find out. 

[garbon]

It's weapons free for roaches.  Smashed one from across the room with a plastic cup a couple of days ago.  At the same time, they're not terribly scary.

Not a fan.