Tuck Everlasting:Comparison of the plot between the movie and the novel

 There are many similarities and differences between the novel Tuck Everlasting  

and the movie(2002 version). Tuck Everlasting is written by Natalie Babbitt

Specifically I will be stating 3 of the differences and 3 of the similarities about the plot. I'm going to mention different parts of the novel and compare them to the movie.  I will tell you why I think that the director of the movie might have changed certain things for a certain reason. The parts of the novel that I will be writing about are when Winnie meets Jesse in the novel and in the movie, when Winnie runs away in the novel and in the movie, and finally, when Winnie finds out about the Tuck's secret in the novel and in the movie. Winnie's full name is Winnifred Foster, however everyone just calls her Winnie.

There are similarities when Winnie meets Jesse in the novel and in the movie. One of them is that Winnie wants to drink from the spring as she plaintively states in the novel "I'm getting thirstier by the minute" she states this because she had been running around in the woods. In the novel, she is spying on Jesse before she asks for a drink when he says, "You might as well come out". She comes out and he asks what she's doing there. She says that it's her wood and that she can come out whenever she wants to. In the movie, Winnie is running away from home and suddenly she trips, and comes to see a boy drinking form a spring. This boy turns out to be Jesse Tuck. She asks if she can get a drink, Jesse says no, instead he calls the spring water "poisoned". When Winnie walks up to him and is just about to take a drink, Miles suddenly swoops by and seizes her, then pinning her down on to the horse. Jesse follows them until they reach the Tucks house.

Another one of the big scenes is where Winnie runs away. In the novel, she runs in to the woods to find the "elf" music her grandmother was talking about the night before. There she meets Jesse. In the movie, Winnie hears that she has to go to a boarding school that is 500 miles away. The narrator in the film, describes her running away as "Winnie didn't really plan on running away, little did people know she just wanted to take a step out of her own house."

The similarities about Winnie finding out about the Tuck's secret in the novel are that by the time she finds out about the secret, she has already been kidnapped. Another thing in the novel is that when the Tucks do kidnap her, they calmed her down by having Mae Tuck showing Winnie her music box. After hearing the music, Winnie thinks, "anyone who owned a thing like that couldn't be too disagreeable." When she does find out, they have taken her to "a place with a shallow stream looped near with willows, and sheltering, scrubby bushes. In the movie she gets kidnapped and the narrator tells you that Winnie lost track of the days that had gone by. She started to bond much more with Jesse and he teaches her how to swim. Afterwards she dances around a fire when, Jesse starts to tell her the secret the Tucks have been hiding for years. Miles overhears him talking about it and finishes it off. Miles told her that he used to be married, and had 2 children Bo and Anna. Before he was married, the Tucks were traveling to different places. One place they found a spring and everyone including Mae, Angus, Jesse, Miles and the horse drank the water. One day while Jesse was up in a tree, he fell out and tumbled to the ground headfirst. The Tucks realized that it didn't hurt him a bit. Miles's wife started to realize that he wasn't aging. She along with the kids left him. They thought he was involved with black magic. Neighbours and friends kept on leaving. Then Miles heard that Anna died from influenza when she was 7.

I think that changes (just in general) to the plot were made because it would be much easier for the filmmakers to the stunts and everything. I also think that they wanted to add some action to the film. Winnie is also older, so they didn’t have her talking to a toad. In the novel, Winnie is 10 going on 11 and in the film she is 14 going on 15.

So this is my essay on Tuck Everlasting. I think that people who want to see the movie, should; however I recommend reading the novel first. In the novel, Angus Tuck quotes “Life. Moving, growing, changing, never the same two minutes together.” So even though some people might think living forever is pretty great, you definitely would get bored and tired of it. A lot of people still might want to live forever, though after they read this book, they might as well change their minds. One last difference is that in the novel, Winnie dies at 78 years old. In the movie she dies at 100.