Tuck Everlasting: Questions of Life and Deathh - Essay Example

Tuck Everlasting: Questions of Life and Deathh Natalie Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting speaks about an eternal concern of humanity, that of immortality. In doing so it also touches upon what it means to live, to choose our quality of life, and to choose death over life. These profound questions that have plagued humankind over the ages have been presented through the perspective of an eleven year old. Without being preachy or condescending, Natalie Babbitt’s book manages to convey a few deep and important lessons.

The protagonist, Winnie Foster, is a lonesome child who frequently contemplates running away from her dreary, routine-bound life. When she finally does manage to get away from her family, it is at the hands of some very unusual kidnappers: kidnappers who have not changed over the last eighty seven years and who treat her as if she was ‘an unexpected present’. Problems arise when a mercenary discovers the secret of their eternal youth and attempts to misuse it. The simple plot of this story brings up a few very important moral dilemmas.

Winnie, at her young age, is constantly forced to choose between what she has been taught as the norm and what newer circumstances have revealed to her as true. She has a hard time accepting the truth about the Tuck family, being a sensible girl. And yet, because of their gentle and kind behavior, Winnie finds it impossible to not love them. She must therefore choose the validity of her own new experience over what she has been taught or has learned to accept as normal. Apart from this important lesson on changing our perspectives on ‘normal’, another important lesson I got from this book is that of making the right decision.

Winnie, despite her fears and guilt of betraying her family’s trust, chooses to rescue Mae Tuck as, according to her, it is the right thing to do. Had she consulted an adult or any other friend on this issue, she would probably have been persuaded to not go through with her final plan. But she has confidence in her own judgment and decides to do it anyway. Even in the case of choosing to live forever at seventeen, Winnie, as we find out at the end, chooses to lead a ‘natural’ life even though the idea of eternity with a family and a young boy she loves must have been tempting.

Making the right decision, even if it is the harder one, is thus, another lesson that I derived from Tuck Everlasting. Perhaps the most important lesson in this book is contained in its conception of life and death. Death is virtually absent in the book as the main protagonists can never die. The man in the yellow suit dies but is barely remembered by anyone and Winnie dies at the end but at the end of a presumably full life. This absence of death does not make life irrelevant; in fact, it makes it even more precious.

Miles and Winnie both echo how important it is to make a difference in the world. Having an eternity in front of you makes it even more important to lead a good life. If the Tucks had chosen to turn criminals instead, there would be virtually no way of stopping them but instead, they choose to continue their humble, kindly lives, even if it means having to move every few years. Tuck Everlasting is a short and simple book. Written in the style of children’s tale with its quaint and touching way of storytelling, it may come across as an easy read but beneath the charming surface there lie a few extraordinarily complex and important ideas that concern each of us.

There is much to learn from the Tucks as well as from little Winnie.