Tuck Everlasting: Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) and the life cycle

The Tuck family in the young adult novel Tuck Everlasting is in many ways shut off from the normal processes of development: it is denied the ability to grow older and thus its members remain in the same stage as when they were granted immortality. Most individuals proceed through a period of biological, psychological, and sociological development particular to the individual's life cycle. For example, it would be expected that Jessie Tuck would eventually leave his parents, start his own family, and then begin to age like his mother and father (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman 2009: 7). As parents gradually take on the infirmities expected of those growing older, quite often children will become caretakers of the elderly, restoring the favor the elderly bestowed upon them as children (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman 2009: 618-619). However, the Tuck family lives in a state of social suspension. Jessie cannot enter into relationships with other people outside the family because he...

Also, his parents remain in a relatively powerful dynamic in relation to Jessie (it is they who decide to keep Winnie at first, fearing she will reveal the secret of the immortal spring to the world) that might not be the case if he had another group of adolescents to identify with separate from the family.
The Tuck family members, because they are ostracized by society due to their peculiar condition, are prevented from fulfilling the full process expected of the life cycle. If one's biology does not change it is difficult to fully appreciate the stages of maturity. The Tuck family acknowledges this when they forbid 10-year-old Winnie from drinking from the spring, saying that to remain a little girl for the rest of her life would be a fearful thing. Winnie could never go through puberty or have a family, for example, which she eventually does, as revealed in the epilogue to the novel. The fact that Winnie appreciates the dangers and disappointments of not being able to develop normally is reflected in the fact that she ultimately decides not…