who are the important characters

Templeton

Templeton is the rat that lives under Wilbur's trough. Before Wilbur meets Charlotte, he passes his time talking to Templeton and although it is 'not the most interesting occupation in the world it [is] better than nothing.'

Mr Homer Zuckerman

Mr Zuckerman is Avery and Fern's uncle and the owner of a large farm down the road from the Arable's. Mr Zuckerman raises pigs and buys Wilbur for six dollars.

Fern

Fern is completely loving and, at the beginning of the novel, totally innocent. She is a moralist who saves Wilbur's life by arguing with her father that a small piglet has just as much right to live a large piglet. She subsequently looks after him as a mother would and when he is sent to live with her uncle, she still visits him. She has a big heart and a motherly nature.

Wilbur

Sensitive and vulnerable, Wilbur is born a runt and saved from an untimely death by Fern who subsequently looks after him until he is five weeks old. He is pampered and babied by her and is completely content when he is surrounded by Fern's love: he is wheeled around in her pram and he joins her and Avery when they go swimming and wallows in the nearby mud. When he is then taken from her, he is very lonely until he finds love when he meets Charlotte.

Charlotte

Charlotte is cool and collected. She is practical, beautiful, skilled and unsentimental. She can't bear Wilbur crying, saying that she can't stand 'hysterics'. She is clever and loyal to her friends - she is the first to comfort Wilbur by assuring him she will save him when he finds out that he is to be killed at Christmastime.

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