Fern and Innocence

Fern isn’t made to imperfect. She isn’t deep enough to be imperfect. But she is the shifter. Fern is mad to be an innocent 8 year old, who is in love with the simplicity of life and the wonders of being alive. But she isn’t that deep. She’s a “what you see is what you get” kind of character.

         

However, if you dig deeper, fern is indecisive. She doesn’t realize what she does to Wilbur because of her innocence, but it tortures him. She loves him so much. She saves his LIFE. She does everything for him and then leaves him. Then she comes back, and leaves him again for Henry.  

The one thing about shifters is that they never lose one thing, and for fern, it’s that she never stops loving Wilbur. I don’t think she ever forgets him either, the pig who showed her life.

I also though about Templeton in the same way. That he was the shifter not fern. He does shift, Wilbur to laziness. But in the end, food always ALWAYS wins him over. I believe that he is not the shifter, because in the end, the subject he was shifting on, he always went one way. Fern didn’t exactly have a goal. She never stopped loving Wilbur but she definitely left him. I feel like they almost do have a romantic relationship. In the eyes of an 8 year old I think she also thinks so. But then she meets Henry Fussy and learns what “love is”.

There’s always a reason why the shifter can’t make up their mind. We have to assume that fern doesn’t come for a reason. She has school, or is away or sick or something. The author doesn’t tell us though. There is kind of a fear to the knowledge that maybe fern didn’t come because she just didn’t want to. That fern actually abandoned Wilbur. I think that’s what Wilbur feared the most. That he was just dropped. For no good reason.