The Truth of Charlotte's Web

Last weekend I had the pleasure of diving headlong into a children's book that I had missed as a child: the timeless classic, Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White.

In a word, this book is transformative.

Not only does it contain what I (and many others) believe to be THE best opening line of a book EVER ("Where's papa going with that ax?"...) but it profoundly explores a question that is at the heart of the human experience:

Why do bad things happen in life?

Now, I have delved into this question before on this blog (if you missed that post, check it out HERE), but I think this topic is so vast and so deep that even the most brilliant theologian can barely grasp the surface of it.  It is a topic with which we all wrestle, from time to time, so I'd like to discuss it a bit more.

In truth, I know exactly why I avoided reading Charlotte's Web as a child: it was simply too sad.  I recall watching the animated film as a small girl at my Aunt Kay's house and thinking that it was the saddest movie I had ever seen.  While it starts out with such hope (the runt of the litter, Wilbur, is saved from slaughter by Fern), Wilbur the pig goes on to become best friends with the barnyard spider, Charlotte...who later dies.  And that is not all!  Not only does Charlotte die, but Wilbur goes on to take care of her children, and they all leave him, too! I still can hear the chorus of high-pitched spider voices saying, "Good-bye...good-bye...good-bye," as these tiny gray dots spin thread parachutes and sail away, leaving Wilbur behind to stare up at the sky in disbelief.  This movie was not a Disney princess fairy tale, that much was certain!

And so, I had nothing to do with this children's classic until THREE DECADES LATER when I stumbled upon The Book that Changed My Life: 71 Remarkable Writers Celebrate the Books That Matter Most to Them and read more than one author mention Charlotte's Web as being their favorite novel.  Really?  The one with the worried pig on the cover?  And so, since I have a brood of little ones in my house, and since we enjoy reading books aloud as a family, I reasoned I had better consider this little book and soon got my hands on a copy.

And I devoured every beautifully written line in it, in the span of one day.

You see, what I didn't see as a child, especially in the movie format (because as we all know, books tend to be so much richer than the movie), was the purpose of the "bad" and the "sad" events of the book.  And, I have been pondering, who are we to label circumstances as good or bad anyhow?

Let me give you an example of this from the story of Charlotte's Web.  In the book, the goose in the barnyard lays eight eggs, but a few weeks later, only seven goslings hatch.  When asked about the eighth egg that didn't hatch, the goose declares it "a dud" and gives Templeton, the barnyard rat, permission to take it to his pile of rubbish under Wilbur's trough.

Several days later, as Charlotte is weaving words into her web in order to save Wilbur from being slaughtered at harvest time, Avery, Fern's brother, eyes Charlotte and tries to capture her.  However, in his effort to climb into the pig pen, he loses his balance, and the pig trough lands right onto the rotten egg, creating such a terrible stench that Avery goes running into the house as fast as he can.

After Avery has left, the goose admits to the barnyard animals: "I'm delighted that the egg never hatched" and is described as "being proud of her share in the adventure" which resulted in sparing Charlotte's life, thereby directly impacting the chances of Wilbur's survival, too.

Can you see how something "bad" like an unhatched egg--the loss of a gosling--lead to the "good" of sparing Charlotte's, and by extension, Wilbur's, lives?

Could we possibly, just maybe (this is fiction after all), open up our hearts to the possibility that the painful things in the story, like the death of Charlotte, and the exodus of her children into the world, are truly good things, too?

I'll admit, I was a sobbing mess when I finished reading Charlotte's Web.  (I read in this biography of E.B. White, which I soon devoured after my feast of Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, that he couldn't record the book on tape without crying either!)

Truthfully, it felt good to cry.  It felt good to be sad.  And in a way, I felt glad.  I felt hopeful to hold open my heart to the possibility that good can come from bad, and that truly experiencing the good necessitates experiencing the bad.

I think back to a time, many years ago, when I lay crying next to my mother: I was a senior in high school, and she was lying in bed, her body riddled with cancer.  I was sobbing because I didn't want to leave her and graduate from high school and go away to college.  I didn't want her to die.  And yet, I remember her tucking my hair behind my ear and telling me, "Risa, it would be sadder if you didn't go."

I knew what she meant then, and I know even more what she meant now.

It would have been sadder if I had stayed where I was as an eighteen-year-old and never left home to find my own way, lay down my own roots, and spread my own wings.

We need the good and the bad.  And like we've explored in this post, who's to say what is good and what is bad, when it all comes from the hands of Mighty God?  For He is a loving, holy, and sovereign God, who works for our good and His glory...of that we can be sure.*


(*among other Scriptures, consider the book of Job and Romans 8:28 to learn more)