White tells the story of Wilbur, a young pig who is born on the Arable farm which is somewhere in the middle of America during the early 1950's. Wilbur was born the runt of the litter and was almost killed by Mr. Arable until his young daughter Fern stops him. Mr. Arable then decides to give Wilbur to Fern to teach her a lesson, but Fern lovingly cares for Wilbur like a real human baby, even rolling him around in a baby carriage. After a few years, Fern was forced to sell Wilbur to her aunt and uncle, the Zuckermans, who lived on another farm nearby.
Although Wilbur liked being on the farm at first, he started to get lonely and bored and he wanted a friend. However, none of the other farm animals had time to be his friend and/or wanted to be his friend at all. Wilbur got very sad until he met someone who would be his friend, a large, but kind spider named Charlotte. Although she was bold and clever, she also had a kind heart and Wilbur was happy to find his first friend.
As time went by, Wilbur grew bigger and didn't know until an old sheep told him that the Zuckermans were planning to kill him around Christmas time and turn him into bacon and ham. Wilbur was very upset because he loved being on the farm and he didn't want to die, but Charlotte soon quieted him and assured him she would find a way to help save his life. It was about a month later that Charlotte formed a plan to keep Wilbur from dying by tricking the Zuckermans.
She wrote in her web in the middle of the night: "SOME PIG". When the Zuckermans saw this in the web, they believed it was a sign from God himself saying that the pig is special and unusual, and not just a message written by a spider. This made Charlotte happy, because she knew that as long as everyone thought that what she wrote was some sort of miracle then Wilbur will not be killed or eaten, although she didn't like the huge amount of people who came to the farm to see the phrase.
