Response to: E.B. White: "Death of a Pig"

In this essay, White recounts the events leading up to the death of his pig. He begins his account by stating, “the pig died at last, and I lived.” By putting this bit of information early on, E.B. White gives away the ending. He moves on to compare the act of raising a pig to that of a play. According to White, raising a pig is a clearly written script that one must follow, but if “one of the actors goes up on his lines” “the play would never regain its balance.” In this case, the play has been completely turned upside-down. It is at this point that White decides to return to the beginning of his story. The author first notices a change in his pig’s behavior when it does not appear for its evening meal. White must then assume that there is something significantly wrong with his pig and immediately phones a fellow farmer, Mr. Dameron. Dameron calls upon another friend and they suggest that White give his pig two ounces of castor oil and an injection of soapy water. They are assuming that the pig just has a case of constipation. White proceeds to the pig’s barn with is son and follows Dameron and Henry’s advice. It is at this point he notices a series of small dark spots on the pig’s back. White leaves the pig and goes out to dinner (an activity he claims is “deliberately arranged to coincide with pig failure or some other failure”). Upon his return home he checks on the animal only to find no sign of success with the oil. The next day, White, once again, attempts to feed the beast with no victory. The author finally calls a veterinarian, which, upon hearing of the pig’s spots, assumes the pig to have erysipelas, a disease that can quickly spread to humans. White fears for himself, but the vet sends a colleague over to run tests on the pig, allowing White to rest easy. McFarland refutes the theory of erysipelas after performing his tests. White then reveals to the reader that the pig died twenty-four, “or it might have been forty-eight”, hours later. White finds the pig dead late Friday night, and awakes Saturday morning to Lennie digging a grave for the creature. In conclusion, White notices a worm and an apple while observing the pig’s grave and comments on the directness of an animal’s burial. 

When I was eleven years old, I had to say goodbye to my first pet. His name was Jake and he was a black Labrador retriever. My family had owned him since before I was born, but in his old age, Jake had developed cataracts in his eyes and began to have seizures. Losing my dog was the first real experience I had to face with death and it was a rough one. I remember, my mother picking me up from the bus stop and waiting to drive the rest of the way home to explain to my brother and I that she had found Jake in the woods earlier that afternoon. Although Jake wasn’t a pig being raised for the slaughter, watching him suffer up until the moment of his death was a very difficult and eye-opening incident for the young me.

In contrast to some of his other writings, E.B. White manages to stay much more “on-track” with this account. I would like to know if this story meant more to him or less to him, because he didn’t spend quite as much time dissecting the events as he did giving the facts. I would also inquire if he felt any sorrow towards losing the pig; and whether this sorrow was for the loss of money that must have incurred due to the pig’s death or at the loss of a “pet” or friend. 

Response to: E.B. White: "Good-bye to Forty-eighth Street"

In “Good-bye to Forty-eighth Street”, E.B. White reflects on the trials of moving house. He begins the passage by explaining to the reader that he has “for some weeks now” been “engaged in dispersing the contents of” his apartment. White discusses that moving house is not an easy task. He and his wife have been meticulously spent evenings trying rid themselves of unnecessary, for lack of a better word, junk. He tells an anecdote about a man who came to purchase some of he and his wife’s many books, only to leave their home with what seemed as “as many books as before, and twice as much sorrow.  E.B. White then moves on to talk about his tactic of clearing out. Every morning, as he left for work, he would try and take one item away with him, just to have his wife explain that “a man could walk away for a thousand mornings carrying something with him to the corner and there would still be a home full of stuff”. The author goes on to defend, or explain, his hoarding by discussing a man/woman’s connections to trophies or awards, and is essentially unsuccessful at parting with some of his more useless accolades. White moves on to explain how he had at one point come to the conclusion that they should go on a trip, to leave the woes of purging behind. They plan a trip to the Fryeburg Fair, in Maine, where White came close to purchasing a heifer. In the final words of his essay, White reflects on his time left in his apartment on forty-eight street. He speaks of the people he will miss, his very own “cast of characters” that would walk down the street every day, and how he will yearn for the garden in back and the animals that inhabit it.

When it comes to packing, I am a disaster. About three weeks ago, I packed up my life eight hours away, put it into boxes, and moved to Oklahoma. I can honestly say, packing was one of the most stressful times of my entire summer. I spent three days sorting out all my clothing into piles and staring at them. What do I bring? Do I need this? Will I ever wear this? Should I just throw this out? It was awful. I do not consider myself an indecisive person. Usually, when it comes to decision making, I am fast and sure of myself. When my mom took me shopping for dorm items I picked out a comforter set in the first ten minutes of being in Sears, and I stuck to it. I am not disappointed in it one bit. I saw something I liked, it was affordable, no second guessing here. But it was the personal stuff that got me. I asked, “Do I bring my student council shirts from high school?” and “Which photos of my friends do I print off?” As I read E.B. White’s essay I could feel exactly where he was coming from, because that was me three weeks ago. The indecision, yet desire to just have the task complete was something I could entirely connect to. I also knew exactly what he meant when he decided some time off from the apartment would do him and his wife some good. While packing myself, I constantly found reasons to go hang out with friends or go get ice cream, because I just needed to take my mind off of the looming piles of clothes stacked on my bed at home.

While reading Good-bye to Forty-eighth Street, there were moments when I found myself disinterested from the reading. In retrospect, the anecdote about the state fair makes sense to explain White’s burning desire to avoid his situation, while reading I felt a large sense of confusion. I feel as though the story within the story may have gone on a little too long and distracted from the point of the essay. I would love to ask the authors opinion on his own writing and see if, in a look back, he could explain the significance of the entire flashback. The essay did, however, leave me wanting more: Did he pack up a lot of unneeded junk? Did his wife throw out his ridiculous trophies? ( I would have). And please tell me he said farewell to that “chip of wood gnawed by the beaver”. More than anything, I just have questions about this point in the man’s life, so I guess his essay did its job.