Natalie Babbitt’s ‘tuck Everlasting’ – a Story of Eternal Life
Have you ever dreamed of living forever, what would life be like if you knew that you would never die? Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting is a classic children’s novel that won her many honors including the 1976 Christopher Award. The successful theme is about a child’s exposure to immortality through a family named the Tucks.
The tale starts off with ten-year-old Winnie Foster running away from her unaccepting parents, she decides to explore in the forest of which her house was surround around. She keeps on running until she spots a young man, who we later find out is seventeen-year-old Jesse Tuck drinking from a small spring. She decides to greet him to get some water herself but Jesse keeps trying to urge her not to without sounding too suspicious. “Believe me, Winnie Foster,” said Jesse, “it would be terrible for you if you drank any of this water. Just terrible. I can’t let you.” Eventually it had the opposite effect on Winnie, and she became uneasy about Jesses mysterious attitude. Not soon after the rest of the Tucks show up to deal with this situation. Mae Tuck decides that they should take her back to their home to tell her about their complicated circumstances so that maybe she’ll understand why it’s important to not tell anyone about the spring or about the Tucks themselves. But what they didn’t know was that the man in the yellow suit from the very beginning of the story had listened to their whole conversation about their everlasting life, and he had a plan. He goes back to tell Winnies parents that he found her and exchange he wants the forest. After the Fosters agree the man in the yellow suit returns to the Tucks home to discuss the deal that he made with Fosters. “The Fosters have given me the wood now,” he said. “In exchange for bringing Winfred home.” The man in the yellow suit planned to sell the spring water to make people immortal which in return would make him rich. After Mae Tuck hears his plan she starts to panic and she shoots the man in the yellow suit with Miles shotgun. He ends up dying on the way to the hospital and Mae Tuck gets the death penalty of hanging. To avoid everyone finding out she cannot die Winnie took her place while the Tucks ran away. As parting words Jesse said that when she turns seventeen she should drink the water and they can live forever together. Time passes on and the Tucks come back to Treegap to meet Winnie again only to find her gravestone. “In Loving Memory, Winifred Foster Jackson, Dear Mother, Dear Wife, 1870-1948.” Then the book ends with the Tucks leaving for their next adventure.
Personally speaking, I feel that Tuck Everlasting was a wonderful book with an interesting storyline. I especially admired Mae Tucks speech about how eternal life isn’t just sunshine and rainbows but to her it is more of a curse.” Can you picture what that means? Forever? The wheel would keep on going around, the water rolling by to the ocean, but the people would’ve turned into nothing but rocks by the side of the road. ‘Cause they wouldn’t know till after, and then it’d be too late.” On the other hand I disliked that Jesse would even ask Winnie to drink the water to be with him. She was only ten-years-old and it was very selfish of him. But it was a relief at the end that she didn’t end up drinking it. Which leads to another reason as to why I appreciated Winnies ending, I feel like the typical happy ending in children’s book would have a stereotypical ending. Like in this case she would’ve drunken the water and lived the rest of her everlasting life with Jesse, which of course wasn’t the case in this fairytale because, she just choose to live a full life. I really think that her decision was very powerful to the storyline just because of her contrastive verdict and it left readers with a wholesome and wise feeling about her.
