138 pages 4 hours read

Educated: A Memoir

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Part 3, Chapters 38-40Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3, Chapter 38 Summary: “Family”

Westover reflects on the peak of her emotional breakdown. Back at Cambridge, she realized she was failing her PhD. She had not sent work to her advisor in over a year, and he suggested that she quit the program. Although she desperately wanted to, she was too distraught to begin working again.

That autumn, Tyler confronted Faye and Gene. He talked to Faye first, who claimed she was on Tyler and Westover’s side, that Gene would take care of things with Shawn. Two days later, Tyler called Westover. He had talked to Gene, who angrily told Tyler that if he brought up anything about Shawn again, he would be disowned. Shawn called Tyler immediately after and told him that he could have Tyler out of the family in two minutes, remarking: “Just ask Tara” (316). Tyler blamed himself, and Westover believed he would side with the rest of the family, just like Audrey did.

In October, she received a letter in an email attachment from Tyler and his wife, Stefanie. The email said it was sent to Faye and Gene too. Westover could not bring herself to open the letter; she knew that it would confirm what she had suspected, that Tyler would denounce her. Instead, the letter confirmed that Tyler and Stefanie sided with Westover, that Faye and Gene “see change as dangerous and will exile anyone who asks for it” (317). They condemned Faye and Gene’s version of family loyalty as “perverted” (317).

Once Tyler committed to supporting Westover, he never wavered. She spent many hours on the phone with Tyler and Stefanie that winter; they provided her with essential emotional support as she went through counseling and began coping with the price she had paid by standing up to her family. Westover realized that Tyler paid a price for the letter too. Even though he and Gene eventually reached a truce, their relationship would never be the same.

That spring, Westover was able to begin work on her PhD. again. She came up with a new research question: “What is a person to do, [she] asked, when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves?” (318). In a year’s time, she completed a full draft of her thesis. On her 27th birthday, she submitted her PhD dissertation. Her dissertation defense took place in December, and she passed. She was officially Dr. Tara Westover.

Although she was happy in her new life with Drew in London, she felt a sense of loss “that went beyond family” (320). She decided it was time to go home. 

Part 3, Chapter 39 Summary: “Watching the Buffalo”

Westover tells about several trips home to Buck’s Peak the spring after she finished her PhD. She was not ready to return to her parents’ home or to see Gene but asked Faye to meet her in town alone, to which Faye replied: “It pains me that you think it is acceptable to ask this. A wife does not go where her husband is not welcome. I will not be party to such blatant disrespect” (323). For the remainder of the email, Faye begged Westover to forget the past and be loyal to the family. Faye’s email was an ultimatum: Either Westover could see Faye and Gene, or she would never see Faye again. Westover says that, to this day, Faye has never gone back on her word.

Grandma-over-in-town passed away during that spring, while Westover was living in Colorado doing research. She drove to Buck’s Peak for the funeral but realized she had nowhere to stay. She remembered hearing that Gene fired Faye’s sister, Westover’s Aunt Angie, and accused her of conspiring against him with the government. Westover figured talking to her might be worth a try. When she arrived on Angie’s doorstep, Westover told her she would forget everything Gene had ever said about her if she agreed to forget everything Gene ever said about Westover. Angie laughed, and Westover enjoyed spending several days with her mother’s siblings and celebrating Grandma-over-in-town. Faye did not spend a second with them; Gene refused to be anywhere near Angie, and Faye would not go where her husband was not wanted.

At the funeral, Westover saw several of her siblings for the first time in years. Shawn ignored her, and Audrey rebuked her for the way she has treated Gene. Luke talked with her pleasantly, and Richard—who recently apologized for believing Gene—was glad to see her. As Westover watched her siblings, she realized half of her siblings were financially dependent on her parents, and the other half left the mountain and obtained PhDs. There was a chasm in the family, and it was growing.

Westover waited a year before returning to Idaho again. Faye refused to see her, but Angie was ecstatic she came to visit. Grandpa-over-in-town even stayed home from church to make sure he would not miss the chance to see Westover. 

Part 3, Chapter 40 Summary: “Educated”

Westover reflects on who she was and who she has become. When she was a child, she was of the mountain where she grew up: “[T]he mountain had made [her]” (328). When she grew older, she wondered if how she had started was how she would end, “if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape” (328).

As she writes the final words of her story, it has been years since she has seen her parents. She is close to Tyler, Richard, and Tony, and they often update her on the drama on the mountain. She feels blessed to hear the stories as distant hearsay because, for the time being, the distance has brought her peace.

However, that peace did not come easily to Westover. She spent years counting her father’s flaws, as if doing so would more adequately justify her choice to cut him out of her life. But, Westover believes, “vindication has no power over guilt,” because “guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness” (329). She believes guilt is not about the other person—it is about you. Once she accepts her decision on its own terms, she sheds her guilt. Accepting her decision to cut Gene off as being a decision for her, for her own wellbeing, is the only way she is able to love Gene.

Westover cites the moment that she left her 16-year-old self behind—the self who she could pretend to be for years in order to fit in with her family—as the moment when the breach between her and her father became insurmountable. The first time she remembers being unable to perform the role of her old self was the night her father called Shawn, and Shawn threatened her with a knife.

The decisions that Westover made after that night are not the ones her 16-year-old-self would have made, she claims. She was a new person, and the old Westover was gone: “You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education” (330). 

Part 3, Chapters 38-40 Analysis

In the final three chapters of Westover’s memoir, she portrays her path to accepting the new person that she is, and the way she must experience her home for the foreseeable future. Westover reveals that one way that she has been able to maintain a relationship with and connection to her home is by differentiating between family and home. For many people, home and family are the same thing, and a person cannot have one without the other. But Westover has to find a way back home that does not include the majority of her family members. She is able to do this by accepting that one’s experience of home can change, and that this truth is okay. She recognizes that she can still love and appreciate her home—and consider it home—but in new ways that suit the person that she has become.

Tyler’s choice to reject Faye and Gene’s perspective in defense of a different one gave Westover back some of her strength; his support and love, while she was completely isolated from the rest of her family, helped her climb out of her breakdown and truly pursue healing. He also helped her see how there are different definitions of family loyalty, and that some are insidious. When he writes a letter to Westover and shares it with Faye and Gene, he explains: “Our parents are held down by chains of abuse, manipulation, and control. […] They see change as dangerous and will exile anyone who asks for it. This is a perverted idea of family loyalty” (317). Tyler demonstrates how family can, at times, be found through common values and ways of knowing, not through flesh and blood.

During this time, after Tyler and his wife show their unwavering support for Westover and she begins going to counseling, she is able to take a scholarly look at the experience of family. As she writes her dissertation, she ponders this research question: “What is a person to do […] when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves?” (318). She begins thinking about the concept of family obligation in the context of history, of different versions of history—particularly Mormonism’s place in it. Ultimately, Westover concludes that Mormon history binds Mormons to the rest of the human family, rather than setting them apart from it. For the first time in her academic career as a historian, she realizes: “Who writes history? I do” (319).

This realization that Westover has while writing her dissertation—that she, along with all members of the human race, writes history—gives Westover clarity about the way that she left home behind. She feels a sense of loss, but this feeling is not just tied to losing her family. She realizes that she passively allowed her parents to write her story—her history—for her back home, to “define [her] to everyone [she] had ever known” (320). She realizes that, although she has sacrificed so much to step out from other her father’s control and her brother’s abuse, she has still allowed him to control her by conceding to his version of what happened between them. She finally realizes that Gene is not the only one who writes history—she does too.

Going back home to Buck’s Peak after being cut off is an act of reclamation for Westover. She goes home not out of guilt, or to save relationships that are lost, but to rewrite her history in her home. Home, then, is not just a physical, geographical place for Westover; it is a shared history—one that those who share a home write together. 

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
Unlock IconUnlock all 138 pages of this Study Guide

Plus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.

Including features:

+ Mobile App
+ Printable PDF
+ Literary AI Tools