Westover, Educated

Educated — Tara Westover (2018)

Tara Westover’s memoir Educated is a best seller and has enjoyed amazing critical success.  I’m not sure I fully trust her memory, because some of the events seem so unlikely.  But, I don’t doubt for a moment that the book accurately reflects her memory.

Tara is the youngest of seven widely spaced children in a family living off the grid on a mountain slope in rural Idaho.  Her father makes a living selling metal from his ever-changing junkyard, while her mother provides mid-wife services and sells medicinal herbs.

Her father is an intense, charismatic man who is totally distrustful of the government and secular society.  He sees conspiracies everywhere, from public education to the Illuminati.  He stashes guns and fuel, readying his family for the coming Days of Abomination or for the Feds.

The family is Mormon, like most of the nearby local population and the residents of the nearest town.  While the Westover family attends church with the community, it appears that most of the local folks keep their distance from this peculiar man and his family.  Tara’s mother is essentially estranged from her mother and sisters, having chosen loyalty to her husband and his way of life.  Indeed, Tara’s father has a strained relationship with his own parents, who live in a nearby house on the family land.

Tara and the other children are deemed home-schooled by Tara’s mother, but there is rarely any time spent on education.  The one fundamental skill of all the children is reading, but the few books available are the Book of Mormon, the Bible and a few old textbooks of the Founding Fathers.

The tension driving Westover’s memoir is provided by abuse from several sources.  The first is her father who routinely places Tara and the family in harm’s way.  The junkyard is a menace as heavy machinery is used to chop the metal and gather it into large bins.  Her older brothers were the primary junkyard workers for dad, but as they get older and leave the home for their own families and jobs Tara’s father taps the 12-year old Tara to pick up the slack.  Her father seems oblivious to the danger, even though each of her older brothers has been seriously injured at some point while working the junkyard.  Likewise, there are several horrendous family auto accidents, caused by her father’s insistence on driving in dangerous conditions.

Part of this Tara attributes, later in college after taking a psychology course, to her sense that her father is bi-polar and that he is manically impatient with getting his work done.  Part of it may also be his sense of fate and that he simply places the health and well-being of himself and his family to the Lord.

Much worse, Tara is physically and emotionally abused by Shaun, a sadistic older brother.  He is contemptuous of women, especially those who “whore” with clothes that expose skin or who talk to other men.  He is a classic abuser, who lashes out in anger at one moment, only to be filled with contrition the next morning.  Tara latches onto the morning version, hoping against hope that the contrite Shaun is the real Shaun.  Her mother and father are ostensibly unaware of the abuse even though many females – Tara, Tara’s older sister, Shaun’s girlfriends, and eventually Shaun’s wife — endured it.

Somehow in this chaotic family, several of the older boys decide to seek a formal college education.  For all his faults, the father believes in freedom of choice and does not stand in the way.  With the encouragement and guidance of an older brother, Tyler, who moved away for college, Tara begins to educate herself with all the material available to her – religious texts and an old math text.  She saves money and buys an ACT study guide and algebra textbook.   She eventually, incredibly, scores high enough to enter BYU, even though she had to fabricate a history of home-schooling on the application.  She later excels in everything academic and attends doctoral programs at Cambridge and Harvard.

While the tension of junkyard injuries and a bullying older brother are vivid scenes, the real turmoil is the guilt Tara feels of leaving the family and its values.  She feels like she is wrong and immoral for seeking independence away from her family and its values.

Recall in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that Huck actually felt horribly guilty about helping Jim run away, even though under today’s eye he should have felt proud about it.  Likewise, Tara can’t but help feeling that something is wrong with her for separating from her family for the secular world of education, even though it seems the right choice for her readers.  For at least a year in graduate school, Tara is seriously depressed, alone, listlessly binge-watching TV and nearly losing her place in the doctoral program.

Her parents make a last ditch effort to return her to the fold by actually traveling to Boston, bastion of liberal secularism.  By then Shaun’s behavior has been revealed – or alleged – by Tara’s older sister.  Essentially, her parents force Tara to make a choice –stand with the family, including Shaun, or move on without her family.  She loves her family, but just can’t go back to a life that will surely eventually consist of subservience to a husband as an isolated housewife and mother.

I wonder at the accuracy of her memory, particularly whether she was as un-educated as she recalls.  She knew no math, no history, no literature, no science, and yet somehow self-educated herself within a couple of years to top scores on college entrance tests.  I guess if Shakespeare could write his plays on an unfinished grammar school education, then Tara could learn so much on her own.  Accounts of other family members, even Tyler her mentor, point out that three of the seven children have obtained doctorates.  The suggestion is that Tara may have received more of a home education than she recalls.

I have no reason to think that she intended to exaggerate her situation.  I listened to her interview with Pamela Paul on the NY Times podcast, and she was careful to play down the drama or to offer any sense of exaggeration.  One of her top priorities was to be accurate.  She interviewed many of her family members and others for verification of her memories, and she identified instances in the book where others recall events differently than she does.  She knew she would pay a heavy price for her honesty.  Today it appears that she has decent relationships with some of her siblings, but virtually no relationship with her parents and other siblings.

Her open and honest reflections are what appeals to so many readers.  Certainly, it is a harrowing tale, an unbelievable tale of self-education, an uplifting tale of personal perseverance, but it is the raw honesty and wrenching decisions that draws us gawkers.

Author: bobfall

Cave art, Roxy Music, ancient Greeks, Founding Fathers, high school girls basketball, theatre, viola, cats. View all posts by bobfall