“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”
--E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
One of the best books ever. Charlotte was a good friend and a good writer! Great epitaph.
ReplyDeleteBoud, I don't know what kind of friend he was, but E.B White was certainly a good writer. So it's not surprising Charlotte was, too.
DeleteHeaven knows!
ReplyDeleteMitchell, it better know, or else there's no use for the place.
DeleteGreat reflection on that ephemeral quest for the meaning of life. I have never read “Charlotte’s Web” but I am moved to do so.
ReplyDeleteDavid, I believe it's still in print.
DeleteI loved that book as a child.
ReplyDeleteDebra, I think it's the children's book that has stayed with me the most over the years. Maybe because White never talks down to kids. Certainly not the quote I give you here.
DeleteGreat quote! Big fan of spiders Kirk, sure you've see a few on my blog haha! Such a classic eh. :-D
ReplyDeleteOh it's the weevil's antenna at the very front. :-D
I knew you'd like this one, Ananka. It's my gift to you for sticking by me all the times I've gone political.
ReplyDeleteHello Kirk, I can't help but note the element of food prejudice here. Spiders presumably like eating flies, which presumably are nutritious for them, as well as being part of nature's balance--farmyards often have enough flies to go around.
ReplyDeletePeople are stigmatized for all kinds of things, including what they eat. Today's attitude is a little better--imagine what we would have said when young if presented with sashimi or kimchi to eat.
--Jim
Jim, not so much prejudice as the various conceits involved with any narrative that involves animals talking to each other as if they were people. In Charlotte's Web, all the animals can communicate with each other EXCEPT the flies, which spares us the potentially sorry sight of a fly pleading to Charlotte for his life. No, the spider just eats the fly and then goes back to figuring out a way to keep Wilbur's human owners from turning him into bacon.
DeleteRemember the old Pogo comic strip? Instead of his best friend the possum really should have been Albert the alligator's lunch. But the food chain doesn't exist in the comic strip version of the Okefenokee Swamp. Instead every now and then you see all the animals gathered at a picnic table eating people food (including sandwiches with meat between the slices of bread, but that meat presumably comes from farm, and not swamp, animals.)
When it comes to reconciling talking animals without giving short shrift to a particular animal's true nature, Warner Brothers cartoons took the most honest route. Sylvester the talking cat continually tries to eat Tweety the talking bird because that's his nature. Then consider the Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs speaks English and has opposable thumbs just like Elmer, yet Elmer is never arrested for attempted murder. In the Warner's animation universe, a rabbit is still a second-class citizen and can apparently still be hunted (as long as it's rabbit, and not duck, season.)
Apparently, Charlotte never saw the movie The Fly. "Help me! Help me!" --JIm
DeleteHa! Good one!
DeleteI should read that book someday.
ReplyDeleteI highly recommend it, Mike.
DeleteIncidentally, E.B. White was a mainstay of the New Yorker for many years, the man mostly responsible for The Talk of the Town section. That Manhattan drollness seeps a bit into the Midwest farm setting of Charlotte's Web, to good effect. Like I told Debra, White wasn't one to talk down to kids.
It's beautiful ::D
ReplyDeleteThank you, Kinga.
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