Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

First published: 1975

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Coming-of-age, death, and family

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: Treegap

Principal Characters:

• Winnie Foster, a curious girl who stumbles upon the spring and enters the Tucks’ lives, forcing them to tell their story for the first time
• Jesse Tuck, a young, carefree boy whom Winnie meets in the forest and who has not aged for eighty-seven years
• Miles Tuck, elder brother of Jesse, who is dulled by the losses caused by his immortality
• Mae Tuck, their mother and the wife of Angus Tuck; she is a strong and loving woman who also cannot die
• Angus Tuck, or
• Tuck, husband of Mae and father to Miles and Jesse, a wise, kind, and immortal man
• Man in the Yellow Suit, a malicious stranger to Treegap who wants to sell the spring water to the world

The Story

In its plot and setting, Tuck Everlasting has the attributes of a fairy tale, but the intensity of the emotions that the characters feel is very real. Winnie Foster is the only child in a family of oppressive pride. Her sole friend is a toad to whom she talks through the fence while her mother and grandmother pass the day watching Winnie through the living room window.

Winnie leaves the confines of her house and encounters several things that enable her to grow. She discovers the freedom of the forest. She discovers Jesse, reclining against the broad base of a tree, waiting for Miles and Mae as he does every ten years. She also discovers the water that she sees Jesse drink, the source of the Tucks’ immortality. This forces her into the dynamic world outside her fence and into the intimate and compassionate world of the Tucks. With her, they share their story for the first time, competing with one another for her attention and making her feel special. Miles tells of how his wife and two children left him, sure that he had sold himself to the devil, because he had grown no older. Mae and Jesse speak of lost friends and neighbors. They talk of having to move often, so that no one becomes suspicious, and never really having a home. Even more, they talk of their isolation from other living things because they have fallen off the life cycle and are unable ever to return. For this, along with other pains they have endured, they tell Winnie the spring must be a secret. They explain that people would not know the mistake they had made until it was too late.

The man in the yellow suit, unbeknown to Winnie and the Tucks, has heard the entire story and returns to Winnie’s home telling her family she has been kidnapped. After securing property rights to the forest from them, he proceeds again into the woods, with the constable following behind him. They go to the Tucks’ home, also in the forest, where they have taken Winnie, both reluctantly and willingly. Before the constable arrives, the man in the yellow suit tells the Tucks of his intentions to sell the water and asks them to join him. They decline. He grabs Winnie’s arm roughly and drags her outside. There, Mae confronts him with Tuck’s forgotten shotgun, to stop him from using Winnie in his ploy and from giving out the secret. She swings the gun until the stock hits his skull with a resounding crack, just as the constable arrives at the house. He takes Winnie home and Mae to the jail.

Finally, Jesse creeps to Winnie’s fence with a bottle of the spring water, asking her to keep it and drink it when she is seventeen, like him. Together they think of a successful plan to free Mae from the jail. It is imperative that they free her, for, though Mae is sentenced to the gallows, she cannot die.

Context

Natalie Babbitt, as a children’s author, is known for imaginative nuances and twists of plot told with clarity in poetic language. This is true in her previous books, The Search for Delicious (1969), Kneeknock Rise (1970), Goody Hall (1971), and The Devil’s Storybook (1974). Her stories include elements of otherworldliness, blended with real people to form a not-too-outrageous fantasy. Often, Babbitt’s settings are places where magic and real people can exist. This is exemplified in Tuck Everlasting, in which Babbitt chooses a traditional setting of magic and mystery—the woods. Babbitt does not simply limit the possibilities of the woods to those conventional uses, though. She allows life to emerge. This life is full of strength and passion, not merely encompassing bare reality but also accepting magic and imagination to make it complete. It is a sophisticated integration of two powerful elements of childhood, an example of a very rich life that would simply be ordinary if either part were missing. It is also a powerful work, taking on components of the adult world while still addressing the world of children, serving as a concrete example of that transition and a hypothetical assimilation of the two.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the story is the wholeness and truth of the characters, especially Mae. There is tremendous love, nurturing, and compassion inside Mae, but there is also the harshest reality: death. Mae kills a man, in front of Winnie, Tuck, Miles, and Jesse. Even though the motivation is understandable and the justification behind such action is perhaps plain, the inevitable reality of the potential for violence inside her is inescapable. In Mae, opposite polarities of hate and love exist, each equally intense and true. More important, especially for a woman, especially in the context of a children’s story, goodness as well as evil are assimilated in one character. Unlike traditional children’s stories, the characters of Tuck Everlasting are amazingly complex and not simply limited to the confines of good and bad and traditional roles. They interact completely with their environment, with all facets of their personalities: feelings, intelligence, strength, fear, and pain. Tuck Everlasting contains the luxury of depth and richness that entitles it to its many acclaims.