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When Winnie returns home after her 24 hours with the Tucks, she seeks comfort from her mother as well as from a child-size rocking chair she was given years ago. Winnie's desire to seek comfort from something like this rocking chair illustrates one element in the novel's broader exploration of what it means to grow up. Though Winnie can step outside her fence and experiment with adulthood, her reliance on the rocking chair suggests that she will also naturally step back inside and toward her family, looking for comfort and assurance from familiar and childish things. This tension indicates that Winnie is still in the beginning stages of her coming-of-age journey and will continue to move back and forth between the wider, scary adult world and the safe and comforting world of childhood. Still, that childhood world doesn't fit as comfortably as it did when Winnie was a small child, just as the rocker is no longer truly the right size for Winnie.
Winnie's Rocking Chair Quotes in Tuck Everlasting
The Tuck Everlasting quotes below all refer to the symbol of Winnie's Rocking Chair. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter Twenty-One
Quotes
Winnie pulled her little rocking chair up to her bedroom window and sat down. The rocking chair had been given to her when she was very small, but she still squeezed into it sometimes, when no one was looking, because the rocking made her almost remember something pleasant, something soothing, that would never quite come up to the surface of her mind. And tonight she wanted to be soothed.
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Was Mae weeping now for the man in the yellow suit? In spite of her wish to spare the world, did she wish he were alive again? There was no way of knowing. But Mae had done what she thought she had to do.
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Winnie's Rocking Chair Symbol Timeline in Tuck Everlasting
The timeline below shows where the symbol Winnie's Rocking Chair appears in Tuck Everlasting. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Twenty-One
Winnie pulls a child-size rocking chair up to her window. She sits in it even though it's too small because it...
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Sitting in her rocking chair , Winnie thinks that she is different and experienced things that are “hers alone.” She...
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Chapter Twenty-Three
...thinks this makes them more interesting, she takes her lemonade upstairs and sits in her rocking chair , after hiding the bottle of water from Jesse. Winnie rocks in time to the...
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