Educated – A journey of conflicting loyalties between familial love and self identity

The Educated by Tara Westover: Memoir of the decade

Educated by Tara Westover: Memoir of the decade

All of us at some point have been through rough patches in life. And to each of us, our issues and and hurdles seem to be insurmountable, and we have difficulty in believing or relating with the issues of others.

After reading “Educated” by Tara Westover, I cannot see my troubles in the same light..ever! They seemed puny and miniscule in front of what Tara had to endure. Moreover, her resilience and persistence is inspirational.

The background

Tara Westover is youngest of the seven children of Gene and Faye Westover. They are a typical Radical Survivalist Mormon family.

The family beliefs are extreme and orthodox, to the extent that even schooling or Hospital care seemed to be sacrilegious or blasphemous. So not attending school was natural to all the seven siblings, and furthermore they had to work with their dad in severe life threatening conditions that almost claimed the life or a limb of the siblings multiple times.

I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. ‘Educated’ is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.

The aversion to modern medical principles and medicine meant that the entire family relied on natural and herbal medicines and tinctures.

Even when the family met with major accidents and Health issues, they never once visited the doctor.

Tara and the Mountain

There’s a sense of sovereignty that comes form life on a mountain

The Westover family has very close and intimate ties with nature, and especially the Mountain Buck’s Peak. They are settled at the base of the mountain and the mountain is likened to an Indian Princess that is protecting the Westover’s from the end-of-days.

The sceneries and the visuals generated in the readers mind create a sense of longing for the mountains and the desire to be one with nature.

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountains, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical. The same sun appeared each morning, swept over the valley and dropped behind the peak. The snows that fell in winter always melted in the spring. Our lives were a cycle—the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons—circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal.

Tara and the Family

To an outsider, Tara’s family is quite dysfunctional and Psychopathic. The fundamentalist dad, the Mother who sometimes looks the other way when Tara is physically tormented and the abusive elder brother with episodes of extreme violence.

“There’s a world out there, Tara,” he said. “And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”

But despite everything, Tara never slandered or disgraced her parents. In fact she was always taking extreme caution to cover up for her parents. Tara blames the mental conditions and the circumstances sometimes, but never her parents or her siblings.

But what has come between me and my father is more than time and distance. It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised, but he is still the father who raised her

Shaun was Tara’s elder brother and was quite abusive and manipulative. Hurting everyone in his life, both physically and mentally to the point of breakdown. He had these intense periods or episodes of anger and things always went out of control, he’d hit his girlfriends, Tara and also her older sister Audrey.

Shawn is also a skilled liar and manipulator. When Tara confronts her parents regarding Shawn’s abusive behavior, he conveniently manipulates Audrey to take his side and cuts off Tara from her family. Tara’s parents think that she has been taken over by the Satan, and that her Dad can help her.

When you abuse someone, you limit their perspective, and you trap them in your view of them or your view of the world.

Tara and her journey

Perhaps the only character in this memoir to exhibit such a wide spectrum of change, both emotionally and intellectually. Tara’s initial world view is formed by her parents. It is shallow and twisted to the point of ignorance that causes harm (Not knowing about Holocaust, for instance)

She is torn between her motivations and loyalties for her parents and her life on the mountain on one side and curiosity and eagerness to learn and expand her world view on the other.

She eventually decides to go with the latter and that made all the difference!

You can miss someone everyday and still be glad you don’t have to see them

Final Thoughts

This book is about a lot of things. But it is not about spreading hate about her religion or her parents.

The freedom of mind and education is on the forefront. While other themes such as Mental Health, abuse and manipulation are explored via various characters in the book. There are also very subtle hints of Patriarchy.

If I had to just take one giveaway from this book, then that would be to realize that our world view is shaped and restricted by people in our lives and the exposure we get from the society we live in. That world view is no where near prefect and its our responsibility to push those boundaries and expand our horizons.

We think about education as a stepping stone into a higher socio-economic class, into a better job. And it does do those things. But I don’t think that’s what it really is. I experienced it as getting access to different ideas and perspectives and using them to construct my own mind.

Tara Westover

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