Lessons from ‘Charlotte’s Web’
By John Chasnoff
For the St. Louis American
With the new movie version of Charlotte’s Web opening this month, local talk show host and activist Lizz Brown strayed from the strictly political to do an interview with one of the movie’s creators. The following week she gave away numerous copies of the book and repeatedly declared it one of her favorites.
I can’t say I was surprised that the controversial host would devote so much energy to a children’s story. After all, if you think about it, Charlotte the barnyard spider is the quintessential activist, following in the folklore tradition of that clever African arachnid, Anansi.
When Wilbur the pig is threatened with certain death and consumption by the farmers who own him, Charlotte steps in. Her success as an anti-death penalty advocate is based on her ability with words. Charlotte spins into her webs phrases such as “Terrific” or “What a Pig!” to make Wilbur a celebrity worth keeping around.
Real life activists could learn from Charlotte.
Her success is not based on confrontation. First, she rallies the other animals to her cause and then wins over the humans with nary a harsh word spoken.
Her showmanship is political theater worthy of Abbie Hoffman, the Yippies, or our own heroes such as Percy Green.
First published in 1952, can Charlotte’s Web join Dr. Spock in taking some credit for that venerable age of activism? If Abbie were around today, I bet he’d confess to being a Charlotte fan. Somebody ask Percy if he read Charlotte as a child, too.
This is the kind of revolutionary perspective we should be sharing with children. What better lessons could we be teaching them? Rather than accepting the status quo or attacking it with the same callousness it threatens to show Wilbur, Charlotte changes things with love in her heart, a smile for everyone and a few good tricks up her sleeve.
Furthermore, Charlotte’s vision of a better world is not simple or Pollyannish. She is not squeamish about killing insects for her own food, and justifies this to Wilbur as the natural order of things. So, too, she accepts her own death as part of the natural cycle of death and rebirth, setting an example for Wilbur and ourselves. Charlotte is able to distinguish between injustices
which can be changed and the realities which everyone must learn to cope with. She fights the one and accepts the other graciously.
Would that all our revolutionaries were this wise!
Contrast the wisdom of Charlotte’s Web with that earlier barnyard political fable, Animal Farm. One might be seen as the answer to the other. Wilbur’s humane victory over death, though only temporary, seems transcendent when compared to the evil pigs who subvert their revolution to selfish ends. Step by step they become that which they have supposedly overthrown. Their “power trip” is the inevitable result of a violent revolution which divides the sides into “Us” and “Them,” and which defines victory as the defeat of the “Other.” In Animal Farm we see the failure of a revolution in which the oppressed merely mimic the behavior of the oppressor.
Not so with Charlotte and Wilbur. No human clothes for them. No hatred of ignorance either. Only a desire to be the helpful teacher, the humble student, and always, still, the advocate for change.
“Terrific” indeed.
