Who and where was Charlotte’s mate? (Yes, she must have had one since she had babies at the end.) He makes absolutely no appearance throughout the entire story.
You do realize that many species of spiders tend to eat the mate? If she didn't eat him then, he probably died after mating.
Even so, when did the mating take place? Charlotte was first introduced several months before she laid her eggs.
Well, there's two explanations for this. Some species of arthropods (insects and spiders) develop their eggs a good while before they lay (how long this would be varies) or she met and mated offscreen.
Why didn’t Fern try to talk her uncle out of killing Wilbur?
This was more or less noted on the Fridge, where someone brought up that the idea of him slaughtering Wilbur might have been seen as a learning experience (that animals are to be "cared for, not coddled", in simple terms), so her talking him out of slaughtering him might not have done any good.
It still seems rather harsh if you ask me, for quite a few reasons. One, Wilbur was Fern’s pig first and she had spent a lot of time loving and caring for him as if he were her own child. Plus, Fern was able to talk her father out of killing him in the beginning which is why Wilbur was her pig to begin with. Also, she is the one who sold him, and in the beginning it obviously never occurred to her that he might be slaughtered. And she is Zuckerman’s niece. If my niece sold me a pig and I knew she wouldn’t want him to be slaughtered, I would reconsider that. Point aside, it also bugs me that Zuckerman would slaughter a pig that had a name. That’s almost like slaughtering your pet.
Yes, I suppose it is, however, as noted, Fern is a farm girl and, if she's to continue in the farming business, then, well, her family might have felt the trope being a case of The Only Way They Will Learn, in which case, she'd have to learn to learn the hard way. If anything, this might be why he was sold was so she could learn. He wasn't sold by her, but her father, and part of the reason as to why he agreed to spare Wilbur is so she would learn how hard it was to raise a weak, runty pig. Likewise, you could see it as a case of Values Dissonance, as the story was written/published and probably takes place in the 50s, where some of the stuff the guardians do might be considered questionable nowadays but normal back then.
In the live-action version, we do see Fern sitting on an overturned bucket drawing outside the barn while Zuckerman and Lurvy engage in a discussion regarding the need to prepare the smokehouse for Wilber just several feet away. After this catches her attention, we see her frantically get up and run in their direction. In the next scene, she's complaining to her parents about what she'd overheard to which her father responds that Wilber legally belongs to Zuckerman and as such he's within his rights to slaughter him. Fern's father would not have brought this subject up while convincing her to sell to Zuckerman because it would have just served to turn her off the idea. I believe this is more attributed to the time period and that this is a farm family than a lack of consideration for a child's feelings/attachment to an animal. It's important to note that this appeared to be set in the '50s and from what I've seen that was a time when parenting was founded more on instilling experience than communication particularly so for a farm family. E.B White established this in the Zuckerman family with Fern's father allowing her to nurture Wilber in the first place and remember on a farm animals are intended to be raised and kept as providers whether it be of material, food or transportation, not as pets.
Can Fern communicate with animals? She obviously knows what the animals are saying, but it's not clear if they know what she's saying.
The animals talk to her when no one else is around, so, maybe she talks to them when no one else is around, too?
Yeah, but when she makes animal noises at them, can she use them fluently enough to be understood by the animals?
IDK about ya'll but I'm pretty sure Fern talked to the animals as though she were talking to a person, not in their respective animal sounds. Thinking about it, there's a scene in the 1970s movie where the Goose talks to her but she doesn't "honk" back and she's silent in the "Lots In Common" number.
IIRC the animals understand other humans when they talk so Fern would probably not need to make animals sounds to communicate with them. She could just talk to them like she would talk to another person and they would still understand her.
So Wilbur's saved in the end! Yay! But what exactly is going to become of him the rest of his life? Charlotte was the one spinning messages over him in his pen, and she's gone, and there's no guarantee that any of her offspring (as nice as they might be) share her level of literacy and intelligence to pull it off again. Fern is said to be getting less interested in interacting with the farm animals, including Wilbur. Meanwhile, being a pig who was originally destined for slaughter, Wilbur is probably a barrow (i.e. castrated) by this point, so it's not like he's going to sire any litters of offspring to benefit the farm where he lives, and even if he's intact, he's probably not desired for such tasks because of originally being a runt and thus still a bit undersized as an adult.
I don't remember if the films touch on it, but the final pages of the book state that "Mr. Zuckerman took fine care of Wilbur for the rest of his days," because Wilbur is basically a celebrity now and Mr. Zuckerman wants to keep him around. He doesn't need any more convincing to spare Wilbur, so Wilbur gets to live out his life as a happy pig just like Charlotte wanted. Her work is done, and Wilbur's life is saved for good.
Live Action Examples
At one point in the film, after Charlotte shows off the work in her web, one of the cows while commenting on her work and how it will affect Wilbur says that she's "glad nobody eats cows." But people DO eat cows. Okay, I get these are probably dairy cows, but the statement is still incorrect. (In fact, I think I've eaten more cows than pigs myself.)
And how would a dairy cow know that?
It could be that the cow was referring to dairy cows themselves and not steers (which, if I'm correct, tend to usually get slaughtered for meat).
The most likely explanation is that it's supposed to be a joke about how cows are morons.
