Tuesday, February 10, 2015

What two places does the author describe in the Chapter One of Tuck Everlasting?

Two settings described are the road and the house in the Treegap woods.

The author uses personification to describe two settings as if they were people.  One is the road through the woods, and the other is the house near the woods.


The wood at the edge of Treegap is described.  This is where the Tucks’ spring can be found.  The road is described in detail.  The author describes how the road goes from being rural to being domesticated.



On the other side of the wood, the sense of easiness dissolved. The road no longer belonged to the cows. It became, instead, and rather abruptly, the property of people. (Ch. 1)



On one side, everything is peaceful and the cows are slowly eating, and on the other side it is hot and oppressive.  The road turns and goes around the wood.


On the people’s side of the road there is a house.  This is the Foster house.  Technically they own the woods.



On the left stood the first house, a square and solid cottage with a touch-me-not appearance, surrounded by grass cut painfully to the quick and enclosed by a capable iron fence some four feet high which clearly said, "Move on—we don't want you here." (Ch. 1)



The house is right outside the village, but we are told “the village doesn’t matter, except for the jailhouse and the gallows.”  So we know at this point that the significant parts of the story will take place in the woods, or at the house, with the jailhouse and gallows becoming important at some point.


The wood is clearly more than "a slim few acres of trees."  It will become important because it is where the spring is that makes everyone immortal.  The fact that Winnie's house is next to it also matters, because she will try to drink from the spring, be kidnapped by the Tucks, and become the friend that saves Mae Tuck from the gallows.

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