Charlotte's Web, You ask? Isn't that one of those cute barnyard stories about talking animals?
It's also a children's story with a protagonist whose only goal is to avoid being butchered.
It's a children's book with this gem of an opening line:
"Where’s Papa going with that ax?"
If you haven't read it, here's how it goes:
Wilbur is the runt of a litter of piglets. He's rescued from being killed with said ax the day he's born by the farmer's daughter, Fern, who bottle feeds him herself but loses interest in him when they both get older.
By then, Wilber's grown up as strong and healthy as any of the other pigs, and the farmer is starting to think about when he should be slaughtered, because he's a pig.
Wilbur befriends a spider who lives in his pen, Charlotte, and to save him, she starts spinning messages about how special he is into her webs for the humans to see.
Spoiler alert, it eventually works... for Wilbur.
Charlotte manages to get the humans to think of Wilbur as special, but that doesn't do anything for the other pigs we conveniently don't get to know.
There's no indication at any time that Wilbur actually is special as the pigs in this anthropomorphic universe go, so one can only assume that there are countless other pigs enduring the same terror who don’t find a way out of it.
This is the equivalent of a horror movie with a sole survivor as opposed to none at all.
Also, this book's most heartwarming moment is a loving description of a spider's egg sac hatching and swarming the hero's cell.