Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
投稿類別: 英文寫作
篇名:
Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
作者:
簡士軒。台北市立建國中學。一年二十三班。42 號
指導老師:
陳聞詩老師
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Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
I.
Introduction
Tuck Everlasting is a fantastic children’s book by Natalie Babbitt, a writer
renowned for her descriptive writing. The book was published in 1975 and received
many awards after its publication. It has twice been adapted for silver screen because
of its popularity. Like other famous fantasy novels, the chronicles of Narnia, Lord of
the Rings or Harry Potter, Tuck Everlasting has an intriguing storyline. On the top of
it, the book explores the concept of immortality, an idea that has captivated human
beings for centuries. For the reasons, the book is listed among the modern classics of
children’s literature as well as enjoyed by readers of all ages.
At the beginning of the story, Winnie Foster, an overprotected eleven-year-old
girl, goes on an adventure into the woods behind her house because she is both lonely
and bored. Her life has a dramatic turn after she encounters the odd Tuck family. The
Tucks tell her that they would live forever because by a stroke of good luck, they
drink from a natural spring, which has been in the woods since eighty-seven years ago.
As immortality is a curse for the Tucks, they take Winne away to prevent her from
drinking the water and revealing the secret to others.
Winnie is then introduced to a new way of life. At first, Winnie misses her home
and dislikes the Tucks. Nevertheless, she grows to love them after spending two days
with the quirky family. They are friendly, sharing their life experience with her. Then,
a man in a yellow suit arrives and changes everything. He overhears the Tucks’ secret
and wants to sell the spring water for a fortune. Mama Tuck has no choice but to kill
him, and she is arrested consequently. Realizing Mama Tuck will be deathless when
she is hanged, Winnie manages to help her escape from the prison. In the end, the
secret is not given away.
Through the adventure with the Tucks, Winnie has experiences of her own
outside her own family. However, she decides not to be as immortal as the Tucks. In
this paper, I would like to analyze what Winnie has learned from the Tucks important
lessons on the meaning of life as well as the dilemmas of eternal life presented in this
book.
II.
1.
Thesis
The Tuck family’s opinions about eternal life
(1) Angus Tuck
Angus Tuck is the father of Jesse and Miles, and Mae’s husband. He refers to life
as a ferry wheel that keeps turning around, making things change constantly. But
being immortal, his family is not a part of the nature’s cycle anymore. Feeling sad
about the eternal life, he hides himself away from the society for fear of watching it
growing past him. He tells Winnie,” You can’t have living without dying. So you
can’t call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the
road.” (Note 1) The image of the wheel Angus used makes Winnie reflect on her
own mortality and follow his advice ultimately for the rest of her life.
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Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
(2) Mae Tuck
Despite being quite untidy in her housekeeping, Mae is compassionate and a
very brave mother. To keep the secret of her family, she kills the man in the yellow
suit by shooting him in the head. Compared to her husband, Mae is more optimistic
about eternal life. She wants Winnie to understand that no matter how long or short
life is, everyone cannot help but take whatever comes. Influenced by Mae’s
determination and optimism, Winnie becomes independent and courageous. She
proves the spirits by breaking the law to rescue Mae out from the jail.
(3) Miles Tuck
As the oldest Tuck child, Miles appears more responsible and diligent. While
leaving home to seek a life away from his parents, he worked as a blacksmith and a
carpenter to earn money. To his regret, his wife and children left him when they found
he wouldn’t age as they did .He tries to explain the importance of the cycle of life to
Winnie when they go fishing together. However, he disagrees with his father’s
decision to hide from the real world. He considers it important to be a useful person
whether he lives forever or not.
(4) Jesse Tuck
Jesse Tuck is a seventeen-year-old boy forever, and the opposite of Miles, he leads
an indulgent life. To him, since he is destined to possess immortality, he may as well
enjoy his life. He is the first of the Tucks that Winnie meets and he asks Winnie to
drink from the spring when she turns seventeen so that they can marry and live
forever together. Charming as he may be, he cannot persuade Winnie to accept his
request since Winnie has become mature enough to make her own decision.
2.
The dilemmas of eternal life
(1) Mortality versus immortality
By using the Tuck family as an example, the novel invites us to consider whether
it is necessary to be immortal. In fact, humankind has been obsessed with the idea of
living forever for centuries. We can find legends that people searched for the pills of
immortality or the elixir of life to approach immortality. Accordingly, the man in the
yellow suit tries to exploit the Tucks and Winnie’s family to own the fountain of
youth for financial gain.
On the other hand, living forever is a curse instead of a blessing for the Tuck
family. Angus Tuck even envies the man in the yellow suit, whose life would
eventually come to an end. When he and Winnie are in the boat on the pond, he
explains to Winnie that everything is like a wheel. The frogs, the bugs, the fish, the
wood thrush and people are all parts of the wheel, always growing and moving on.
Death is also a part of the wheel; there will be no living without dying. Nevertheless,
being immortal, his family has fallen off the wheel of life; they have been stuck in the
dilemma of eternal life.
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Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
(2) Orderly world versus disorderly world
Winnie’s family is rich and conservative. Everything in her house was clean and
neat. To her surprise, she finds the Tucks’ house dusty and full of cobwebs, with a
mouse living in the table drawer and half-completed quits. What’s more, the Tucks
don’t care about manners in the messy house. By contrast, Winne had been educated
to have good manners, and thus behaviors such as licking maple syrup off hands or
throwing clothes on the floor were prohibited.
It bored Winnie to always stay in a neat and tidy home; however, she is
fascinated with the casual attitude that the Tuck family hold towards their life. By
coping with the new environment very well, Winnie proves that she is adaptable.
(3) Responsibility versus freedom
Angus and Mae Tuck are role models for their family because they are
responsible. They realize that as long as their secret is uncovered and misused, the
powerless will be under control of the greedy and evil such as the man in the yellow
suit. Therefore, they selflessly make their efforts to keep the secret from being
discovered, even at the cost of their own freedom.
What the Tucks said and did has had a positive influence on little Winnie.
Initially, she was a spoiled girl who was frustrated by her family because she thought
they cared for her too much. She just wanted to run away to enjoy her freedom.
However, after staying with the Tucks, she learns that even if in the eternal life,
people still need to deal with lots of dilemmas.
(4) Social identification versus isolation
Winnie’s family live in a “proud” house enclosed by an iron fence, and the world
they own also keeps others alone. No wonder that Winnie envies the toad she watches
hopping brightly across the road outside her fence, for she feels so isolated and wishes
to be out in the open. Likewise, the Tucks are not able to develop normal relationships
with other people for fear of being noticed that they never get older. Despite being
immortal, they live a lonely, difficult life.
Not only Winnie but also the Tuck family has experienced a loss of identity.
Without knowing their embarrassment, most people might take it for granted that the
rich are always happy, not to mention coming to a realization that eternal life might be
not a blessing but a curse.
3.
What Winnie learns about life through her adventure
(1) Understanding the great circle of life
Tuck uses the wheel as a symbol of changeable life, and he shows Winnie how
the wheel works and how it moves things around them. Winnie starts to realize the
life philosophy after she sees how the water moves out of the pond and into the ocean
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Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
while they are still stuck in the rowboat. At the moment, she cries out that she doesn’t
want to die. But Tuck explains to her that “dying is part of the wheel, right there next
to being born.” Knowing death is just a natural part of life and observing the pain of
the Tucks’, Winnie changes her mind and finally chooses not to drink the spring water
to gain immortality.
(2) Knowing how to make a decision in the dilemma
Nearly eleven years old, Winnie has little experience with life beyond the fence
of her house. However, she yearns to do something different to make her life more
interesting. She keeps thinking if she should run away from her overprotective family.
Then, one morning she finally decides to get into the woods to pursue her
independence. The decision changes her life dramatically. During the time she spends
with the Tucks, she learns to love others rather than just think of herself. And when
she realizes it is emergent to rescue Mama Tuck from the jail, she makes another
important decision to save her in spite of violating the law. Owing to Winnie’s
adventurous spirit and loyalty to her friends, she gains new respect from her family.
The other kids who did not like Winnie before also want to be her friends now.
Knowing how to make a decision in the dilemma has led Winnie to become a more
independent and respectable person.
III.
Conclusion
Tuck Everlasting is a book which asks a profound question about the meaning of
life and death. The reaction of the Tuck family to their fate was surprising to me at
first, for I held the belief that immortality was a blessing to mankind. However, the
author reveals that we cannot escape from dealing with lots of dilemmas in either
eternal life or mortal life.
What’s more, the book also speaks about how death is just as much as integral
part of life as living is. With the great circle of life, we are meant to be born, live and
die. Because of mortality, we learn to appreciate our lives. As Winnie decides not to
drink from the spring water, we know that she has learned her lesson. We gain some
and lose some in our lives. Would you choose to become immortal at the cost of being
isolated from the society? Natalie Babbitt seems to have dropped a hint for the
children who read this book: we all have to learn how to make a sensible choice when
caught up in a dilemma.
IV.
Reference
(Note 1) Natalie Babbitt. (2007). Tuck Everlasting. New York: Square Fish, an
Imprint of Macmillan
(Note 2) Natalie Babbitt / Hannah Mitchell. (2004). Scholastic BookFiles. New York:
Scholastic Inc.
(Note 3) Jonathan Singer. Retrieved July 15, 2011, from
http://home.flash.net/~cooljazz/
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Tuck Everlasting: The Dilemmas of Eternal Life
(Note 4) Diane Clapsaddle. Retrieved December 20, 2011, from
http://monkeynote.stores.yahoo.net/
(Note 5) Mary Shelley. Retrieved July 10, 2011 ,from
http://wondersmith.com/scifi/mortal.htm
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