Tuck Everlasting explores the relationship between life and death, positing that life without death is not the same as a life that will end. In Chapter 12, Tuck tells Winnie “you can't call it living, what we got” (66), arguing that while the Tucks are alive, they are not truly living. Through the Tucks’ different responses to immortality and character decisions, they demonstrate how life differs when one cannot die.

The Tucks each have a different approach to their eternal life. Mae and Miles are practical, if emotional. Their unchanging natures have isolated them. Mae feels a lack of a community, and Miles lost his family. They love each other, Tuck, and Jesse, but their eternal life does not allow them to live outside their kin. Tuck feels his immortality the most. He lived a long life before he became immortal, and he is tired. Life has lost meaning for him. Since nothing will ever change, he feels stuck.

At first glance, it seems Jesse is not affected by his unchanging nature. He claims eternal life lets him have an unending number of new experiences and that he enjoys them all. While this is true, the experiences hold less meaning because Jesse can repeat them whenever and as many times as he likes.