Connecting Annotations Response

Pg. 12 “Mr. Arable makes the decision, Fern has no voice.”

Pg. 108 “Why doesn’t Mrs. Arable have a first name, why doesn’t she have an identity?”

Pg. 152 “All of the adults are dressed the same, why is their no expression or individuality?”

I noticed that within ‘Charlotte’s Web’, the adult characters have no depth or personality, they are all relatively flat. At the fair, all of the adults are wearing the same attire, according to their gender. The women and men limited their interaction with each other, which was representative to stereotypical behavior of that time period. (1950’s.) I think each character lacked a distinct personality because E. B. White purposefully made all of the adults in this book the same person. I think this “adult character” is shown as a pessimistic, autarch, who constantly reinforces judgments reflected from mainstream society. Mrs. Arable only worries about Fern because she is not doing the “normal” activities for an 8 year old girl, only with reassurance from a professional Doctor puts her concerns to rest; not even entirely, until she see’s Fern on the Ferris wheel with Henry Fussy. I can relate this back to our reality, in which teachers and authority figures constantly pressure children to work hard, and do activities their friends are doing, so they can appear average. Maybe, throughout both societies, in the book and the world, parents only want the best for their kids to an extent where they are no longer helping, but hurting. For example, when Mr. Arable, makes a definitive decision about selling Wilbur, even though his intentions were to benefit Fern, he unfortunately had a surface comprehension of the situation, and his actions only further alienated Fern from her peers. E.B. White could have been conveying the idea that sometimes parents try to teach their kids lessons, but inadvertently push their children away and alter their and their child’s identity. I feel like E.B. White’s perception of grown-ups as a whole was in a rather unattractive light. I mean, Mrs. Arable doesn’t even have a first name; a name gives you identity, and without identity, without knowing who you are, what is the significance of your opinion? Mrs. Arable has no true ground on any subject because she does not know herself fully enough to evaluate other circumstances. I think E.B. White was trying to convey a sense of misjudgment, within the fact that adults have conclusive answers and ideas about the world and who they are. Maybe the reason why the adults are such weak characters in this book is because they cannot differentiate who they are, and who they want to be.