Entry #5: Themes of Charlotte's Web

In Charlotte's Web, I've noticed themes throughout the book that have to deal with the balance and cycle of life and death, and growing up. Some examples are Wilbur was going to be killed but then Charlotte saved him and kept him alive. Then Charlotte dies and her new baby spiders were born in spring, the season that is universally recognized as symbolizing rebirth and starting over in a cycle, the cycle of life. But by the time the spiders were born and Charlotte had died, he didn't need a mother figure like Charlotte and Fern anymore (and Fern had seemed to disappear anyway...) which goes into the theme that I mentioned earlier of growing up. These themes are important in a widely known children's book like Charlotte's Web because like Wilbur, young children will have to grow up and move on eventually away from their parents and starting their own life, and at a certain point in everyone's life, we must deal with the death of someone we know. Charlotte's Web is a highly and widely praised children's book, for these reasons and more, and when we grow older we sometimes reread the books from our childhood and see all the themes and lessons we didn't see before. Just because we're older now doesn't mean simpler-seeming books are not for us anymore.