Tuck Everlasting

The Tuck family feels that living forever makes them miss out on the human experience. Because they cannot age, they have to live apart from other people and can’t get to know anyone. The two...

When Winnie takes Mae Tuck's place in the jail cell so Mae can escape before she hangs, Winnie becomes an "accomplice" to a crime. That makes her a criminal, but because she is underage, she can't...

Conflicts come in two general categories. There is external conflict and internal conflict. One internal conflict in this story is the internal conflict that Winnie struggles with throughout the...

Tuck Everlasting, written by Natalie Babbitt, is about immortality. The Tuck family discovers an eternal spring that gives everlasting life. When she runs away from home, a young girl named Winnie...

As Winnie, her grandmother, and the stranger stand in front of her grandmother's cottage, they hear "a faint, surprising wisp of music...a tinkling little melody", come floating to them...

Miles has a more negative view of the spring than Jesse does. The Tuck family drank from a spring that made them immortal. It meant that they never aged, and never died. It took some time for...

The Tucks became aware that the spring water made them immortal when they did not die of life-threatening injuries. When the Tuck family first drank from the forest spring, they had no idea what...

If you are talking about a "timeline of events," then you are talking about the plot of the story. This timeline usually runs from the exposition, the inciting incident (often called the...

The Foster's house is organized and immaculately clean; the Tuck's house is delightfully cluttered and disarrayed.The cottage where the Foster family lives is "always squeaking clean, mopped...

In Chapter Twelve of Tuck Everlasting, Tuck takes Winnie out onto the pond in a rowboat just as the sun is setting. They bear witness to the different kinds of wildlife and the natural world around...

Let's start with the man in the yellow suit. A previous answer stated that Mae shot him. That is incorrect. The man in the yellow suit wants to take Winnie and expose the Tuck family's secret of...

Personification is a figure of speech where human qualities are given to animals, objects, or ideas. There are quite a few examples of this concept in Tuck Everlasting. For example, Outside, the...

The homes of both the Foster and Tuck families bear testament to the values and ideals that the family holds dear. At home with her parents and grandmother, Winnie knows a world characterized by...

Winnie wanted to run away because she was bored. Winnie didn't exactly run away; she was kidnapped. Winnie feels smothered at home to the point that she “lost her patience at last and decided to...

When first introduced to Winnie, the reader realizes that she is not a happy young girl. She is an only child and has parents that are constantly watching over her. Winnie longs for a little bit...

The answer to this question can be found in chapter twelve of Tuck Everlasting. During this chapter, Angus Tuck takes Winnie out in a rowboat to the nearby pond. It is his way of getting her...

Winnie sees Jesse Tuck drink from the spring. Winnie goes into the forest, where she sees Jesse drink from the spring when he does not think anyone is looking. She says she is thirsty and wants to...

It is during chapter 5 that Winnie meets Jesse Tuck by the spring. Winnie insists that she should be allowed to drink from the spring that she saw Jesse drinking from, and Jesse tries to keep her...

On the face of it, the woods belonging to the Foster family appear perfectly normal. But on closer inspection, it's clear that there's something unusual, even enchanted about them. For one thing,...

Over the course of the novel, Winnie has changed to become more independent. When we are introduced to Winnie, she chafes against the restraint that she feels has been implemented on her by her...

Winnie is waiting for midnight, because that is when she knows that she will be able to sneak out of the house. Winnie needs to sneak out of the house that night in order to help break Mae out of...

Jesse does not want Winnie to drink from the spring because she will become immortal. Winnie accidentally sees Jesse drink from the special spring in the woods outside her family’s house. She...

The man in the yellow suit is our antagonist in this story. He initially goes to the Fosters to try and glean information about the magical spring in the woods owned by the Fosters, which gives...

Angus feels as if the Tucks are not fully participating in life because they are immortal. Angus uses the rowboat outing to explain to Winnie how he feels about being immortal. That's what us...

In chapter 23, Winnie hides the bottle of spring water in a bureau drawer. Later, in chapter 25, she empties the bottle over her toad. This toad is presumably the same one Winnie meets at the...

The Fosters’ house is the first house on the left of the road that leads into Treegap Village. It is described as a “square solid cottage with a touch-me-not look.” It is surrounded by short-cut...

Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt, is a novel about a girl named Winnie who meets the Tuck family in the forest. Theirs is an unusual family, compared to Winnie's, who are prim, proper and...

The quote in question appears at the very end of chapter five. A lot happens during this chapter. It starts with Winnie Foster testing out her idea of running away. She goes off to explore the...

The stranger is the man in the yellow suit. He tells Winnie in Chapter Four that he is looking for a family. The man lifted his eyebrows. "Oh," he said, "I'm looking for someone. A family." The...

In Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting, when the narrator describes the Fosters' cottage as being "touch-me-not," the narrator is describing the cottage as looking so well-kept that it looks...

In Chapter 15, the man in the yellow suit makes a deal with Winnie's family: he will bring Winnie back to them in exchange for their land. So, what the man in the yellow suit proposes is a trade:...

Tuck is thrilled to see Winnie because he hasn’t seen a child in a long time. The Tuck family is immortal. They do not get many visitors, because they try to keep hidden. If someone found out...

Mae Tuck travels to Treegap to meet her sons. The Tucks have an arrangement whereby "every ten years, first week of August, they meet at the spring and come home together so's (they) can be a...

I've always thought to myself that there is a difference between the words "house" and "home." I understand that both locations have bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen. I understand that people...

The Tuck and Foster families are structured in much the same way. They each have four members: the Tucks consist of a mom, a dad, and two children, and the Fosters are made up of a grandmother, two...

The answer to your question can be found in the prologue of this book. The author tells us plainly that three different events took place, and that, at face value, there seemed to be no connection...

At the beginning of this section, Winnie is very skeptical of her situation. While she is interested in Jesse, she is scared of being involved with his family and feels worried over her own...

Tuck Everlasting has a profound theme for a children's novel. The teaser on the cover reads, "What if you could live forever?" This question is explored with surprising depth and pathos in the...

One difference between the two families can be illustrated by examining their homes. The Foster family's home is cold and unwelcoming, while the Tuck family's home is a very warm and welcoming...

The prologue of Tuck Everlasting begins with three events, seemingly unrelated. The author states the events will connect somehow, creating a sense of foreshadowing: One day at that time, not so...

Mr. Tuck dreams that his whole family never drank from the spring, died, and went to Heaven. Some people may fantasize about being immortal. Being immortal, Mr. Tuck dreams of dying. He lives in...

Mae and Angus love Winnie like their own daughter, and Winnie loves them back as she would a surrogate family. At first, Winnie isn't sure what to think of the Tuck family. Her logical brain is...

Jesse falls out of a tree and eats poisoned toadstools, the horse gets shot, Pa gets a snakebite, and Ma cuts herself. The Tuck family had no idea what they were in for when they drank from the...

In Tuck Everlasting the sweet Winnie Foster worries that if Mae Tuck goes to the gallows her secret will be known be everyone. Mae hit the man in the yellow suit with a shotgun when he was trying...

Event number one is Mae Tuck beginning her travels to the small town of Treegap. She only makes the trip once every ten years, and she makes the trip in order to meet her two sons, Miles and...

Miles' wife had left him because after they had been together for a number of years, she realized that oddly, he was not aging. This was just too weird for her to handle, and, thinking that he had...

The Tuck family explains their "incredible story" to Winnie Foster in chapter 7. The story is hardly believable, and it is clear that the Tucks have never tried to explain their particular...

Mae Tuck is compared to a potato. A metaphor is “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to a person, idea, or object to which it is not literally applicable” (Guide to Literary...

When Winnie first meets Jesse Tuck, she is mildly curious. She is a little bit frightened when they kidnap her though. By the time Winnie gets to know the Tucks, she considers them good friends....

The mood of Tuck Everlasting changes throughout the novel. It begins very somber and melancholy. When Winnie Foster is kidnapped by the Tuck family, she learns of their secret. Angus Tuck is tired...