1st Critical Reflection (Charlotte’s Web)

In the novel, Charlotte’s Web, E.B White uses different communicative models; the main one that is used through the entire book is, animal-to-animal communication. Wilbur the pig, communicates very well as we humans do to the other farm animals around him. We act against that model thinking that it isn’t very logical for animals to communicate in the language we do; but in reality we do know that animals do communicate with each other in their own way. A way we will never actually understand or know. Animals do follow human verbal instructions, but that doesn’t consider it as them communicating in a human way. Their response to us isn’t in a human verbal way at all. “Speaking-meat” is a communicative subject. The pig “Babe” disrupts the assumption that because he is a meat animal he is too stupid to understand what is going on around him. The refusal or denial of communication status to animals is a crucial, formative arena where closure strategies affect many humans. E.B White uses another communicative model, which is Human-to-Animal communication. During the novel, Fern whom is just a normal little girl per se; but has a unique way of communicating with the animals on the farm. Starting with the bond of her and Wilbur. Once she starts to tell her parents about the communication she is experiencing between the animals, they start to worry. Kids their age have a lot of imagination; something that she can soon grow out of is what they assume. E.B White states, “You know perfectly well animals do not talk.” Something we really don’t actually know. We as humans are more afraid I think to feel as if animals could possibly talk just as we do. Sigmund Freud states, “A child can see no difference between his own nature and that of animals. He is not astonished at animals thinking and talking in fairy-tales…” Goes back to