Summary
Chapter Twenty-Two
It is an incredibly hot day. Winnie sits outside in the yard, and sees her toad, which looks parched and unhappy. She goes inside to get some water to put on the toad, but when she returns, the toad is gone. Winnie's mother and grandmother are sitting inside to escape the heat, so Jesse is able to approach Winnie by the fence. He tells her that he, Miles, and Tuck are going to break Mae out of jail - Miles will use his carpentry knowledge to remove the window. He does worry that the constable will notice she's missing when he conducts one of his nightly patrols, but that doesn't matter. Jesse has come to say goodbye to Winnie. He also gives her a bottle of water from the spring, and tells her that if she drinks it when she's seventeen, he'll find her and she can come live with the Tucks. Winnie takes the water, and offers Jesse a plan. She says that she can take Mae's place in the jail - she'll burrow under the blankets in the bed so that the constable doesn't notice Mae is missing. This will give the Tuck family more time to get away. Jesse is worried about what will happen to Winnie if she goes through with this plan, but she insists that she'll be fine. They plan to meet at midnight. Winnie's grandmother calls to her, and Jesse leaves.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The day continues, long and hot. Winnie's mother and grandmother sit in the parlor fanning themselves and sipping lemonade, but Winnie spends most of the day alone and thinking. She knows that her family would not approve of what she is going to do, but she believes that it is the right thing. She wonders what will happen when the constable and her family find her in the cell in the morning, but then she thinks of her beloved, innocent Tucks and realizes that they need her to help them. She wonders if she should drink the water and marry Jesse. She falls asleep briefly but wakes up five minutes before midnight.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Winnie heads out of the house and runs toward the jailhouse. A storm is brewing, and lightning starts to flash. Winnie sees three shadows near the jailhouse, which turn out to be Jesse, Miles, and Tuck. They hug each other, then get to work. Winnie thinks briefly of a poem: "Stone walls do not a prison make / nor iron bars a cage." Miles pries the nails free from the window frame. They all drop down when the constable comes through on his rounds, then resume work. Finally, they are able to pry the frame from the window. Mae manages to squeeze herself through the opening just as it begins to rain. The five of them hug, and then Winnie climbs through the window into the cell just as it starts to rain. The storm rages, and Winnie looks out the little window to see an empty yard and hear the distant tinkling of the music box.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Two weeks later, Winnie sits in her yard listening to birds singing. No one has been able to find the Tucks, which pleases her. She had settled down in the bed in the prison and fooled the constable during the night, but in the morning when he saw who she was, he was enraged. Still, Winnie cannot be punished for being an accomplice to the escape of a murderer because she is too young. Winnie's family was angry, but when she told them that she loved the Tucks, they understood this and protected her. Winnie realizes that school will start soon, and she is looking forward to it. Other children have been wandering by to talk to her through the fence, because her recent adventures have impressed them.
She sees her toad again with a dog chasing after it. Winnie grabs the toad and drops it on the grass inside the fence. She is disgusted that she actually touched the creature, but then touches it again and realizes that it's skin is soft and cool. On impulse, she grabs the bottle of spring water that Jesse gave her and pours it on the toad. Winnie reasons that she knows where the spring is and can also get more water if she decides she wants to become immortal. She puts the toad back on the road, and tells it that it will be safe forever.
Epilogue
In 1950, nearly seventy years later, Mae and Tuck return to Treegap in a horse and buggy, looking very out of place. They are shocked to see that the woods and the Foster cottage are gone, and that there are many new streets and houses and stores. Some people joke about how old-fashioned they look as they pass by, but Mae and Tuck ignore them. They stop at a diner for some coffee, and ask the waiter what happened to the woods. The waiter tells them that three years before, there was a big electrical storm that caused a forest fire, and the rest of the area was bulldozed. Tuck asks what happened to the spring in the forest, but the waiter says he doesn't know what he's talking about.
After this, Tuck visits the cemetery while Mae is shopping for supplies. He finds the Foster family plot and Winnie's tombstone, which says she had died only two years prior and had been a wife and mother. Tuck is sad, but salutes Winnie, clearly thinking that she has made the right choice. When he meets up with Mae, Tuck explains what has happened to Winnie. She thinks immediately of Jesse, but really, the whole Tuck family knew what Winnie had decided long ago. They head out of Treegap, and swerve to avoid a toad who sits in the middle of the road, acting like it's immortal (in fact, this is the toad that Winnie poured the springwater on so many years before). Behind them drifts the gentle melody of the music box.
Analysis
While the Tucks and Winnie are breaking Mae out of prison, Winnie thinks of a line from a poem - "Stone walls do not a prison make/nor iron bars a cage" (p. 123). This is a line from a poem entitled "To Althea, From Prison" by Richard Lovelace, written in 1642. The poem was written during Lovelace's time in prison for supporting an unpopular political position, and was likely addressed to his lover. The poem argues that true imprisonment comes from ignoring one's true values and by giving up love. Moreover, the poem suggests that innocent people who are imprisoned unjustly can eventually find happiness.
In Chapter Twenty-five, the reader learns that Winnie is too young to be punished for aiding and abetting the escape of the murderer. Today, this argument would be unlikely to hold up in court, and would almost certainly lead to jail time regardless of the age of the offender. This omission may reflect the whimsical nature of the novel.
In her article "Winnie Foster and Peter Pan: Facing the Dilemma of Growth," scholar Catherine M. Lynch argues that Winnie's choice not to drink the spring water parallels Wendy's decision to leave Neverland. Despite the fact that neither of them can ever return to this special place after they give up the possibility of staying the same forever, their decision also paves the way for their entrance into adulthood. In Chapter Twenty-five, Winnie is sitting in her yard and starting to look forward to school. She is presently enjoying more friendly relationships with the neighborhood children, who are curious about her interesting adventures. She uses the spring water that Jesse gave her to protect the toad who has appeared to her throughout the novel, reasoning that she can always get more water. However, at the end of the novel, the reader founds out that she has in fact died and been buried naturally - in other words, she chose a normal life rather than an immortal existence wandering with the Tucks.
When Tuck and Mae return to Treegap nearly seventy years after the events described in the novel, they discover that the woods have been bulldozed over and the spring can be found no more. Mae and Tuck seem uneasy that the miraculous spring has completely disappeared, despite the fact that they tried so hard to keep it a secret. Some commentators have suggested that Tuck Everlasting can be read as a novel about ecological conservation. Peter Kunze argues in his article "Winnie-the-Conservationist: Tuck Everlasting, Ecofeminism, and Children’s Literature" that one of the primary motivators for both Winnie and the Tucks is the need to protect a vital natural resource - the spring - from exploitation by human beings. Unlike other stories about children venturing into nature, Winnie does not want to conquer or overcome or even play in nature. Instead, she wants to protect it. On the other hand, the antagonist is the man in the yellow suit, who wishes to exploit the spring for his own profit, bringing to mind greedy profiteers who seek to make money from destroying the natural world. Kunze argues that these central concerns place the novel firmly within a tradition of ecology-minded fiction.
The novel ends on a humorous note. At the end of the novel, Tuck and Mae swerve to avoid a toad sitting in the middle of the road, and Tuck says that the creature is acting like it's immortal (p. 140). In fact, this is not just a figure of speech - like the Tucks, the toad really cannot be killed, because this is the toad that Winne poured the water on.
