If I can fool a bug" thought Charlotte, "I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs."
Charlotte's web, page 67, chapter ten.
I wrote -Charlotte is so smart!
Charlotte is so smart!! she seems to know everything, from scientific facts to philosophy. But how does she know it? it just occurred to me that we barely know anything about Charlotte. where did she come from? how does she know so much? how old is she? we get the general impression that she's older, and therefore wiser. her age and knowledge contrast and keep in check Wilbur's youth and how naive he is. but another interesting question is, why didn't i ask all the questions above when i was first reading it? I think that i didn't ask those questions because i accepted Charlotte as the mentor character.
in every narrative there is a mentor character, a Dumbledore for every harry potter, a Jiminy cricket for every Pinocchio. they are the ones who know everything. they don't come from places, they're just there. I've always just accepted them as being old and wise and nice. but now I'm more curious. Why does Charlotte help Wilbur? is she just being nice? doesn't she have more important things to do? or is she doing it because she really is friends with Wilbur? the one that makes sense the most is the last one. especially since this is a book for little kids, so sometimes people (or anthropomorphised animals) go to extremes for friendship. It's interesting tough, to look at Charlotte's and Wilbur's friendship. they barely ever talk about her, always about him. he seems like a pretty hard person to be friends with. so why is Charlotte friends with him? maybe she doesn't like to talk about herself. maybe she likes other people -and other people's problems- to distract her from herself and her own problems. even if this is right, there is still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding Charlotte
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