On “Operation Charlotte’s Web”

Charlotte’s Web is a children’s book about friends banding together to save a life. 

It was one of my favorite chapter books growing up. I must have read it five times. I liked learning about all the different things that happened in a single year on an old-fashioned farm. I was fascinated by the slop they feed the pig, and the idea that you could bathe an animal in buttermilk. I loved the beautiful descriptions of nature. The ending if the story was so triumphant and yet so sad, it’s haunted me.

Charlotte’s Web is a story about a tiny, nearly invisible,  creature who nobody wants, using all of her skill to save her innocent friend from being killed by a farmer who wants to make money. And that friend returns the favor by caring for Charlotte’s children.

The themes of caring for and protecting vulnerable life run through the entire text.

The story starts with young Fern desperately fighting with her father to stop him from killing off the runt of the litter. She gets to keep and nurture the doomed piglet, at least for a little while. Then Wilbur is coldly taken from her and sold to the Zuckermans, but she goes to their farm to visit him.

At the farm, the geese watch zealously over their eggs, and the gander threatens to kill Templeton the rat if he tries to hurt a gosling, because all the animals realize that Templeton doesn’t have a conscience.

Charlotte is herself is a killer who eats insects, but when the goose reveals that Wilbur is going to be slaughtered and made into bacon, Charlotte becomes her new friend’s protector. She launches a campaign to spend the rest of her life testifying to his worth and value, using her skill of weaving words into her web. She recruits all the other animals to use what power they have to help her. They even manage to get Templeton to help by threatening his livelihood.

Avery brings a half-dead frog into the Zuckermans’ kitchen, where it comes back to life and makes a mess. Later, Avery tries to hit Charlotte with a stick, but Fern tries to protect her just as she tried to protect Wilbur, and Avery falls into the rotten egg.

At the fair, Charlotte spends the last days of her life encouraging and protecting Wilbur until she is satisfied that the Zuckermans will keep him alive– only then does she admit that she’s dying. Wilbur repays her friendship by bribing Templeton to help him protect Charlotte’s eggs. And he continues to protect and befriend Charlotte’s posterity for generations.

That’s what the book is about. It’s one of many classic children’s books that appears heartwarming and sweet but is actually serious and subversive. Charlotte’s Web is a book about how friends can work together to protect each other from a more powerful oppressor who plans to destroy them for the money.

If you live in Charlotte, North Carolina, right now, I’m sorry.

I have a dear friend who lives in Chicago, so I know a bit about how horrifying it is to live under one of the Trump Administration’s horrifying Immigration crackdowns.  You’re going to see a lot of violence designed to terrorize you into just going along with whatever the regime wants. They’d like you to look the other way as they kidnap and torture your vulnerable neighbors. They’re going to claim to be enforcing the law, even though the law guarantees everyone their due process and Immigration has been violating due process right and left. Citizens have been caught up in the sweeps and will continue to be caught up.

And ICE has come up with an asinine nickname for this terror operation: they’re calling it “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”

This is yet another example of right-wing people appropriating a beloved book that they know nothing about just to hurt people. Think of how they’re always quoting Orwell out of context, while the way they act is increasingly Orwellian. Think of all the times they’ve used stills from The Lord of the Rings for right-wing memes. Think of Ted Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham to protest the cancelation of Dr. Seuss that wasn’t happening. They don’t read books. They just use books to score points.

Maybe this is your opportunity to be better than they are.

Maybe when my friends in Charlotte and all over the country hear “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” we can remember what that book is actually about.

We could steal the term right back from them, and have our own Operation Charlotte’s Web: a movement for small and seemingly powerless people all over the country to do every little thing we can to protect our friends and neighbors.

Remember what Charlotte’s Web had to say about friends:
“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.”

Let’s lift each other up a trifle, and help our friends.