Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt (1975)
“A ten-year-old girl discovers a family who cannot die — and must decide whether immortality is a gift or a prison.”
Character Analysis
Ten years old, overly protected, and beginning to chafe against the life that has been arranged for her. Winnie is not defined by what she wants — she doesn't know what she wants, only that the fence is too close and the world is too far. Her transformation over the novel is not into someone who knows what she wants; it is into someone who knows what is right. Her final act — pouring the spring water on the toad — is the most quietly courageous thing she does, precisely because no one asked her to do it and no one will know.
Precise, slightly formal for her age — she has been raised to speak carefully. Her language loosens and warms over the course of the novel.