Charlotte's Web
E.B. White (1952)
“A spider writes words in her web to save a pig — and in doing so, writes one of the most honest books about death ever published for children.”
Character Analysis
The grey spider is the novel's moral center and its most fully realized character. Charlotte is not good in spite of being a predator; she is good in full possession of what she is. She eats flies and she saves Wilbur and neither fact diminishes the other. Her intelligence is practical and elegant — she identifies a problem, constructs a solution out of language, and executes it with craftsmanship. Her unselfishness is never performed or sentimental: she doesn't announce that she is sacrificing herself; she simply does the work. The novel honors her by making her death as plain as her life.
Wide vocabulary deployed with care and pleasure — 'salutations,' 'magnum opus,' double meanings. Precise, formal, exact.