The existing relationship between reality and imagination in children literature ported a characteristic inclination to the fears and joys of childhood experiences. The literary approach developed in children literature border on the storyline that indulges in beautiful fantasy to elicit imagination in the lives of children. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White builds on the blocks of creative and intellectual abilities to manifest the symbolic representation of reality and imagination.
Charlotte's Web depicts the nature and processes of friendship, death, loyalty and valor within the constructs of reality as well as fantasy. The incorporation of characters form farm animals effectively help children to gain the much needed insight on issues of friendship and the imaginative process of death (White, 46). By drawing on the realities and imaginations around the joys of human love, the author illuminates the metaphorical picture of backgrounds writing about the relationships between characters, their feelings about each other and their approach to dealing with traumatic events. This is the angle on which a concise relationship between the world of reality and the world of imagination is important in establishing the complete metal picture around the thinking of children.
Literary scholars contend that the interlinkage between reality and fantasy in children literature allows a depiction of experiences that visualize a goal and enhance the ability of children to think about various ways if doing certain things in different situation (Marcia and Foley, 34). Based on the constructs of Charlotte's Web, it is imperative to note that the line between the world of reality and the world of imagination is achieved on the basis of explicitly depicting a sense of wonders. This allows children to engage in the narratives presented within the spectrum of carrying through their childhood experiences to adulthood. According to Huck (123), the literary capability of using imagination within the suspense of reality is the mechanics through which Charlotte's Web feeds into the creative joys of children literature.
The world of imagination has academic benefits in the holistic spectrum of children literature. Charlotte's Web extensively introduces children to images that they have little experience over thereby making them inclined towards learning through visualization. The detailed sensory inclination that Charlotte's Web builds on is a symbolic implication of art and entertainment. Basing on the blueberry pie, the novel gives an impression of getting oodles information about literary aspects of things in life. The Zuckerman barn elicits the sensory imagination allowing children to imagine how barns look like. It is through the blend of aspects of reality and fantasy that Charlotte's Web enhances the functional use of imagery. Detailed description of pens, stalls and stacks of hay as well as pitch forks, grindstones, monkey and rat traps (White, 32), characterize the scope of visualization that is only evident through the interplay between reality and imagination.
The use of animal characterization adds value to the interpretation of the novel within the spectrum of fantasy. It is evident that on a number of occasion, the story in Charlotte's Web demonstrates the survival of nature and its instincts. With regard to this, the author paints a mental picture of change that requires the interaction of the child’s mind with the imaginative world to appreciate the principles that change takes place in life and in most cases such change is not reversible. To illustrates, the fair is an anticipated event in the realistic sense of human life. However, by portraying that adults go to bed early and dream about their unfulfilled fantasy, Charlotte's Web explores a significant relationship between the world of reality and the world of imagination. Lurvy, engages in dreams that see him through baseball at a cloth car thereby winning the Navajo blanket. In the same breadth, Mrs Zuckerman dreams about the aspect of deep freeze unit. However, when morning strikes, Charlotte's Web categorically shows how everyone cleans themselves up and get ready for the day’s event (White, 54).
Imagination and reality play significant but different roles in the life of children. The blossom of fantasy as children grow demonstrates a principle that children engage in imaginative but real life activities thus the need for children literature to facilitate the entertaining and educating aspects of life in an imaginative manner (Marcia and Foley, 43). Huck (143) further reiterates that concepts of imagination and reality in children literature are ideologies through dreams. While this principles abstracts the cultural and sociological ramification of imagination, the notion of reality is constructed alongside the images of fiction to advance the hopes and desires that are often manipulated by forces in the life of children.
Drawing from the cynical, hopeful and playful tone adopted in Charlotte's Web, it is imperative to note that matters of reality are addressed in a sympathetic way. In the novel, the narrators emerges as a straight shooter using an objective tone to express his feelings about the rain. Similarly, the tone on the death of Charlotte invokes sympathy and imagination of the fate of the spider (Marcia and Foley, 45). The important aspect the role that reality and imagination reflects the forces of human emotions, love and compassion that children begin exercising early in life. The romantic invention of fantasy and imagination as depicted in Charlotte's Web highlights the personality of the narrators in enhancing self-expression within modernist aesthetic thought (Huck, 131).
The activity of imagination do not confirm the reality existing in the ideal world. The novel, Charlotte's Web give meaning to the empirical reality by producing an interplay of imagination and reality through perception mechanism as well as aspects of value judgment (Marcia and Foley, 39). The ability to interpret the process of familiarization enhances the use of aspects of the world of reality as well as the world of imagination as a means of artistic communication and makes the readers aware of the realty that exists in the work of art. Charlotte's Web shows the extent to which the ideals of reality and imagination affects the novel and children literature thus emerging as instruments of expression human emotions and reason.
The representation of characters underscore the reality around friendship within the question of love, care and compassion. This relationship between fantasy and reality allows children to understand the essence of friendship teaching a great deal about aspects of life and death. Reality and fantasy characterize elements that children literature helping children to relate to the narrative and accept the inevitability of life without being cognizant to the principles of the author. THIs extensively reinforces the severe reaction of children to human feelings because of their inability to comprehend the decisiveness that traumatic events imposes on the psyche and reality of individuals in the society.
Work Cited
E. B. White. Charlotte's Web. HarperCollins, 1999
Huck, Charlotte S. "Children's Literature." Theory into Practice 21.4 (1982).
Johnson, Marcia K., and Mary Ann Foley. "Differentiating fact from fantasy: The reliability of children's memory." Journal of Social Issues 40.2 (1984): 33-50.
