Discussion Topic

Comparison of Tuck and Foster Lifestyles and Homes in "Tuck Everlasting"

Summary:

In Tuck Everlasting, the Tucks' and Fosters' homes reflect their contrasting lifestyles. The Fosters' house is immaculate, organized, and uninviting, symbolizing their strict, Victorian values. In contrast, the Tucks' home is cluttered and comfortable, embodying a bohemian, free-spirited lifestyle. While Winnie is initially fascinated by the Tucks' way of life, she ultimately chooses her familiar home, valuing mortality and the lessons learned from both families. Both homes are isolated, highlighting their protective nature and care for Winnie.

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In Tuck Everlasting, compare the Tucks' house to the Fosters', and state Winnie's preference.

The Tucks’ home is much more disorganized and comfortable than the Fosters' home, and Winnie is homesick. 

Winnie is surprised by the way the Tucks live.  She does not necessarily prefer the way the Fosters live, but she is not used to the way the Tucks live.  Everything is comfortable but a little bit haphazard and messy at the Tuck house. 

The Foster house is one where there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.  It is a household where it is the women’s duty to keep things neat.  Winnie has been trained to view housekeeping this way.

Winnie had grown up with order. She was used to it. Under the pitiless double assaults of her mother and grandmother, the cottage where she lived was always squeaking clean, mopped and swept and scoured into limp submission. There was no room for carelessness, no putting things off until later. (Ch. 10)

Therefore, she is totally unprepared for the kind of household she steps into at the Tucks’ house.  The Tucks believe more in comfort than in order.  Winnie is amazed and enamored of the “homely little house beside the pond.”  She finds it disorderly, but realizes the Tucks are okay with that.

It was a whole new idea to her that people could live in such disarray, but at the same time she was charmed. It was . . . comfortable. … "Maybe it's because they think they have forever to clean it up." And this was followed by another thought, far more revolutionary: "Maybe they just don't care!" (Ch. 10)

Dust, messes, and disorganization do not bother the Tucks.  They have lived long enough to get their priorities straight.  Apparently, when you live forever it no longer matters to you if the dishes are done or not.  Other things in life become more valued.

Although Winnie finds this lifestyle luxurious and exciting, she also misses home. She has never been away from home before, and never slept in a bed besides her own.  It is not a matter of choosing one lifestyle over another, at the point. Winnie just misses the familiar.

In the end, Winnie chooses not to become immortal.  She remains a Foster.  Winnie has learned some interesting lessons about life from the Tucks and her experiences with them, but she decides that she would rather continue being mortal and living her own life.

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How do the Tuck's and Foster's houses differ in "Tuck Everlasting"?

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 and swept and scoured into limp submission".  Winnie's mother and grandmother tolerate no carelessness, and Winnie is used to the atmosphere of order and dutifully kept organization.  In contrast, the rooms in the Tucks' "homely little house beside the pond" are covered in "gentle eddies of dust (and) silver cobwebs"; in the kitchen, dishes are stacked haphazardly "in perilous towers without the least regard for their varying dimensions...every surface...(is) piled and strewn and hung with everything imaginable", and the furniture in the parlor is "set about helter-skelter". 

Winnie is at first "amazed" at the thought that people could live in such chaotic conditions, but after thinking about it awhile, she decides that the Tucks' home is charmingly "comfortable".  In an unwitting reference to the main theme of the story, she first wonders if the family just thinks "they have forever to clean it up", but then she concludes that, in a refreshingly carefree way, that "they just don't care" (Chapter 10).

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What similarities exist between the Tucks' and Fosters' houses in Tuck Everlasting?

A similarity between the Fosters' home and the Tucks' home is that both are isolated from the rest of society in one sense or another. The Tucks' home is literally isolated because it is located in a very remote place, whereas the Fosters' home is isolated simply because it looks uninviting.

When Mae Tuck decides she has no choice but to bring Winnie home with them so that Tuck can convince her to keep the secret of the spring, Winnie travels with the Tucks for a very long time. Towards the end of the journey, she climbs a "long hill" with them followed by a second long hill. Beyond the second hill, she sees the "deep green of a scattered pine forest." It's within this pine forest that the Tucks' cottage resides. They must live in a remote home, far away as possible from other people, because people begin to grow suspicious when they see the Tucks are not aging. The Tucks know that people's suspicion can lead them to discover the Tucks' secret, which is very dangerous for all of humanity.

Similarly, the Fosters' cottage is situated near a wood that the Fosters own. People of the village never enter this wood, partly because it belongs to the Fosters and mostly because the Fosters' cottage has such a "touch-me-not" appearance to it that strangers stay away from the wood, the cottage, and the Fosters in general. In describing the Fosters' cottage as being a "touch-me-not cottage," the narrator is saying that the cottage looks so pristine and perfect that it looks cold, distant, and intimidating; therefore, strangers stay away from the cottage, just as people stay away from the Tucks' home because it is so remote.

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What similarities exist between the Tucks' and Fosters' houses in Tuck Everlasting?

I think that the biggest similarity between the two families is their care for Winnie Foster.  Both the Fosters and the Tucks clearly care for her and her safety.  Mr. and Mrs. Foster are not portrayed in a very positive light.  They are very over protective parents that do not let Winnie do much wandering on her own.  It's a bit oppressive, but it has to be argued that they clearly care for her safety and well being.  They do not want to see her hurt.  The same is true of the Tuck family.  They are a bit looser in their rules with each other and toward Winnie, but they absolutely would give their lives to protect Winnie from any sort of danger.  

Another similarity is a very surface level, literal similarity.  The Foster and Tuck families are families with a still together mother and father. That's a big deal to me as a reader, because I don't see that too often in newer teen literature.  Take The Hunger Games or Twilight series for example.  Bella's parents are divorced, and Katniss's mother is a single mother.  

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How does the Tucks' home lifestyle differ from the Fosters' in "Tuck Everlasting"?

The Fosters, Winnie's family, are an example of the quintessential Victorian family. They are strict, educated, wealthy, and sophisticated. They have rules for their daughter Winnie about how her life should be lived. She is frustrated by these stifling rules and feels trapped in this proper, stuffy Victorian lifestyle. The Tucks live very differently than the Fosters. The Tucks are free spirits, living in the woods rather non-traditionally. They are messy, living in a disorderly cottage, dressing more casual and living comfortably in a more bohemian and free lifestyle. Winnie has never seen this sort of lifestyle before, and it shocks but also thrills her. While uneducated, the Tucks are, however, very wise, and they live close to nature. They understand, due to the fact that they are immortal, the importance of the circle of life and the natural order of things. Winnie learns many important lessons from them, and finds a balance between the structure of her family's life and the life that the Tucks leave, where even in their permanence of life, everything is impermanent and they live in constant fear of being discovered.

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In Tuck Everlasting, does Winnie prefer the Tucks or the Fosters?

Winnie first goes to the Tucks because she feels stifled by her life as a Foster.  She feels like her parents are controlling.  Winnie has to decide whether he wants to live forever like the Tucks, but also whether she can live with the Tucks.  The free lifestyle is attractive at first, but might get old after a while.  Winnie ultimately choose mortality for now.  She believes that she is too young to make the decision, and she can make it any time when she is older.  She wants to love Jesse, and in her current body she is too young so she plans to wait until she is 17, when she can drink from the pool and become immortal as an adult.  She does not return though, and she dies.  Winnie chooses the Fosters over the Tucks.

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How do the Foster's house and the Tuck's house in Tuck Everlasting differ?

The Fosters' house was referred to as the touch-me-not cottage. Everything was so neat and clean and organized that it did not look lived in. It was more like an advertisement for a furniture company. The house matched the Fosters' cold, sterile personalities. There was no warmth nor visible love in the house.

By contrast, the Tucks' home had a shabby, run-down, much used and loved to death feel, like a worn out teddy bear passed down from generation to generation. The furniture was faded and saggy or broken. A mouse lived and ate the crumbs left in the kitchen drawer for it. The house was not regularly cleaned and dusted. It was a lived in sort of place. The Tucks, because of their immortality and poverty-stricken economic status could not go out and buy new things. They moved frequently and took everything with them. So, it was old and battered. However, the Tucks' loving spirit and down-to-earth homeyness fit in with the furnishings just fine.

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