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Education and Emulation

by Val Sierakowski

​     Tara Westover’s personal narrative Educated explores how her experiences shaped who she became through obtaining an education that allowed her to escape her educationally limited and psychologically abusive family situation. Westover grew up on a small farm in rural southern Idaho in the late 20th century. Her descriptions of the land and natural environment rarely find fault with it. Buck’s Peak is an almost-perfect area sequestered away from the frenzy and confusion of the outside world. The world contained within Buck’s Peak is full of natural beauty, but also remote and isolated from the larger, modern world. Westover found herself shaped primarily by the forces and influence present in her home. The two strongest, earliest forces were her father Gene and her older brother Shawn. This restricted education, along with the periodic physical trauma from injury as well as the mental and physical abuse inflicted by Shawn and her father stunted her sense of self-confidence and personal development even as she grew increasingly curious about an outside world both feared and condemned by her father. His message is clear: the outside world directed by secular science and political radicals is corrupt and dangerous. It cannot be trusted, and the family must prepare for the calamity that this ungodly world will bring about. Tara’s early education took place largely at some under the direction of her parents, and can be described more as indoctrination than education. She is reared within a family that does not allow her the freedom to grow and denies her the independence she desires.

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     Gene Westover is the stern and demanding patriarch of the family. He is consumed with fundamentalist paranoia and embraces a variety of racist conspiracy theories, accompanied by his conservative Mormon faith. His beliefs suffuse the family, who is victim to his capricious whims often resulting in serious physical injury to members of the family including the author. Tara’s restricted understanding of the outside world led her to see her father as a supreme authority and over time she came to recognize that she had internalized some of his beliefs. However, she offers evidence that even at a young age she knew that he was unreliable and dangerous. This environment is one from which she must escape if she hopes to develop to her fullest potential.

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     Although homeschooled and lacking a sufficient grounding in the subjects needed to gain university entrance, Westover gets the idea of attending Brigham Young University (BYU) a Mormon-sponsored school an hour or so away in Provo, Utah. Despite early social awkwardness and lacking basic understanding in a few academic areas, attending BYU gave her the space, support, and vocabulary to consider that the mood swings of her father might suggest Bipolar Disorder. Her father goes through several episodes of mania and depression in Tara’s youth, causing the whole family to struggle and fracture in an attempt to return him to normal. Her father’s distrust of the government stopped him from receiving help; and this distrust of the government shows as well in his refusal to vaccinate his children. With her father as the almost singular source of understanding a larger world, Tara internalized many of his beliefs. She was reluctant to receive basic medical care until separated from the family for a long period of time. The time and experiences at BYU and later at Trinity College, Cambridge in the UK provided her with much-needed space to gain separation from the demands and views of her father and the closeted and threatening atmosphere of the Westover home. It was a process that took many years and not without hesitation and struggle. Indeed, every step forward Tara made in realizing who she was a person was often met with a return to her father’s house and submission to his rules and delusions.

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     Dr. Kerry is one of the people that Tara meets at BYU who sees her potential, guides her to resources, and most importantly advocates for her as one of the people who recognizes that Tara’s family situation is unhealthy and unstable. Tara herself chooses Dr. Kerry as a mentor; he is encouraging and most importantly approachable. He is the one who urges her to apply to a Cambridge study abroad program (230). In discussing her experiences through metaphor, comparing Tara to gold, he helped her realize that her potential and worth was internal (242). Tara’s academic education parallels her personal development; she learns that she is a person with worth while at the same time learning about cultures and histories outside her own. Tara’s growth is informed by the people around her who she comes in contact with; BYU is an important location where Tara expanded both her personal and academic horizons.

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     In addition to the important mentoring, she also receives critical financial support. The bishop at BYU who counsels her offers to have the church pay Tara’s rent. Tara’s relationship with him is a safe arena where she can examine herself, but because she meets him when she is so newly separated from her family in Idaho, she has difficulties successfully growing and taking advantage of his mentorship and the opportunities he offers her.

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     Cambridge is another location where Tara’s growth accelerates. Cambridge thrust Tara into situations, such as a formal dinner, where she must learn to adjust to a far more secular society. Tara’s supervisor at Cambridge, Dr. Steinberg, is another authority figure who recognizes Tara’s potential. He offers to pay her tuition to allow her to continue at Cambridge. Studying under Dr. Steinberg allows Tara to reconstruct her view of historical texts and by extension, her past and present mental processes, from cherished tracts of absolute truth to be emulated to perspectives by others; sometimes flawed, but not without merit (240).

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     Tara’s education takes a further step when she confronts a memory of her past concerning the Weaver family. The events of the Ruby Ridge incident are well-known; Randy Weaver, a survivalist with white supremacist ties, and his family, had a stand-off with federal officials, leading to the death of his son and wife. Tara’s father took only the most striking details and described an entirely different event to his family, attempting to engender in them the same fear and paranoia he felt. In Gene Westover’s telling, the Weavers were innocent, noble people murdered by a government bent on depriving virtuous people like themselves of their God-given rights. Ruby Ridge served, in part, of his confirmation of his paranoia that a government conspiracy was afoot to murder his family. While the extent of her father’s embrace of white supremacy is unclear, her brother eventually began to persistently refer to Tara as “n****r”. When Tara had the opportunity to research the Weaver family for herself, she wondered if her father had imagined himself in Randy Weaver’s place; defending his family against a hostile, foreign force (210).

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     It is not that her father does not love her; rather, he loves her to the point of annihilation. His love for her exists so long as she is an extension of him; her skills are loved by him so long as they reflect well on him. Tara learns to fit herself into the roles he sets for her, repeatedly breaking out whenever she escapes from home only to return to those roles when she comes back. Her father was the largest male figure in her life, but certainly not the only one. Her brother Shawn also had a profound impact on the person she became.

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     Shawn reinforces what Tara’s father teaches, but because he is not the family patriarch he has limited power to enact his will; however, he may have been a kind of patriarch-in-training as he clearly models his father’s demand for obedience and desire for dominance, especially in his relationships with women. However, instead of being an ally to Tara, like their other brother Tyler, he is in turns cruel and kind, taking out his frustration on her and the other women in his life. When Tara experiments with wearing makeup, Shawn retaliates by holding her head down in the toilet. He calls her a “whore”, which is shown to damage her self-image throughout the book; her ability to change and improve her self-image is greatly stunted by Shawn’s abusive name-calling. Shawn’s physical abuse is another weapon against Tara’s attempts to be independent. Shawn once fractures her wrist by grabbing her. She knew Shawn’s intentions were to hurt her, but in her journal she chooses instead to excuse his abuse.

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     The bishop at BYU who counseled Tara identified patterns of behavior in her brother that Tara could not see or would not acknowledge. He accurately predicted that Shawn’s marriage will be manipulative and violent (200). He laid the foundations- and vocabulary- for Tara to come to terms with Shawn’s behavior, and finally to free herself from it. However, this did not stop Tara from learning from Shawn and even emulating him. When Shawn and her father get into an argument, Tara is convinced they will come to blows, but Shawn simply leaves because- as Tara sees it- he knows he will be incapable of winning an argument with their father. In the same chapter, when her father is attempting to lecture her, Tara likewise removes herself from the situation. From Shawn, Tara learns that she can leave. This is the most important lesson that she learns, but also the hardest.

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     Interestingly, Tara’s initial thoughts about what might be seen as an early feminist consciousness also see her mimicking Shawn. Tara’s early awareness and understanding of feminism connects maleness with power, as shown when she is feeling sympathy for Shawn’s wife Emily; she thinks that Emily needs someone strong, but the strong person that Emily needs is described as a man (264). Tara also models “male” actions to feel powerful and in control; the actions that she mimics are usually Shawn’s. When she treats her sister Audrey’s children the way Shawn treated her, it allows her

to see that her experiences with her father and Shawn didn’t exist in a vacuum; that her sister and mother lived it before her. Tara’s mother is a complex figure who tried to encourage and protect Tara but ultimately was more loyal to Tara’s father, and she as well provides lessons for Tara to learn from and emulate.

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     Tara’s mother starts the book as a meek figure discounted by everyone, including Tara. She loved her mother, but the other figures in her life were more charismatic; more powerful. The most important lesson Tara learns from her mother is how to manipulate the egos of the men around her to keep herself safe, a tactic she first learns when her mother defends buying a telephone to her father. Her mother plays dumb; she blames herself, saying she must have misunderstood, while bringing up valid reasons for having bought a telephone. It satisfies Tara’s father and avoids conflict. Tara’s father shapes a reality that he can understand and control, even if it is not truly real. When she must disguise that she is a midwife, she asks stupid questions to the men in the ambulance to alleviate suspicion; Tara goes as far as bragging that when it comes to playing stupid with men, nobody is as skilled as her mother. Tara repeats this behavior of soothing the male ego when her brother Shawn threatens her with a knife (287).

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     From growing up in a tight-knit, conservative Mormon family to obtaining a PhD in history from Cambridge, Tara Westover’s journey is an exceptional tale of triumph in the face of a history of adversity and repression. Tara’s own incredible drive enabled her to free herself from her family and her natural curiosity and tenacity allowed her to expand beyond the future that was waiting for her at Buck’s Peak, but her journey crossed paths with countless people other than the ones mentioned here who influenced her and helped inform her character. Tara’s education in an academic sphere was rigorous, but it was her education at the hands of her father that inspired her to seek it.

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