Tuck Everlasting

(LSC 530)

#1. Babbitt, Natalie. Tuck Everlasting. New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1975.

        Published Reviews

Knight, Nic, et al. Rev. of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Bookseller 36 (2001) http://web5.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/899/290/31950845w5/purl=rc1_ITOF_0_A80899890&dyn=14!xrn_1_0_A80899890?sw_aep=ripl13  (Accessed 2/17/03)

Wynne-Jones, Tim. Rev. of Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Horn Book Magazine 76.6 (2000): 720. 

The book is written for older children and teenagers, ages 10-14 years old.

In Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt provides a view of love and loss gently, almost indirectly, to readers who have yet to experience the death of a loved one, or who may be doing so for the first time. She does so in a manner that respects the reality of life and death that is the human experience.

Upon a chance meeting, Jesse Tuck takes Winnie Foster back to his home where he lives with his parents and brother. The Tucks befriend Winnie and convince her to stay with them. Winnie learns that the Tucks have discovered a well which produces water that gives everlasting life. Having discovered the well, and drunk from it, the Tucks realize many people will want to partake of it; they also discover the burden of living forever and decide to keep the well a secret. As Winnie stays with he Tucks, they come to love someone outside their own circle. Winnie, too, comes to love the Tucks though eventually she realizes she must return to her family where she grows up as expected. But this does not end the Tuck's relationship with her. Periodically, they go back to   Treegap but they do not contact her.

Winnie must  face several dilemmas in the novel. Should she stay with the Tucks or return to her own family? Should she tell anyone about the well? Most important, Should she, herself,  drink from it? She is given a chance  many teens subconsciously desire- the opportunity to defy their mortality. But Winnie realizes that living forever is not desirable.

Winnie  offered  the Tucks a gift in her mortality. They learned to love someone outside of themselves; they make a commitment to Winnie, as seen not  in their annual visits to Treegap, but also in the fact that, having realized that it was not in Winnie's best interest to contact her, they do not do so. They continue to love her from a distance as she grows to adulthood. Years later, when the Tucks visit and find that Winnie has died, they experience grief. The reader has the sense that this may be a new experience for the Tucks, perhaps paralleling a child's first experience losing a loved one.

Natalie Babbitt makes an important point. Death is not only a natural part of life; it is also a gift. The reader must wonder what it was like for the Tucks, nomads really, who  only once have the experience of loving someone other than themselves. When they finally took that risk with Winnie, they learned the value of  love and loss- and  mortality.