Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Educated, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, History, and Subjectivity
Learning and Education
Devoutness and Delusion
Family, Abuse, and Entrapment
Summary
Analysis
Tara begins having trouble with Shannon and Mary. Her standard of cleanliness is vastly different from that of her roommates, and she begins to annoy them for not washing her hands, leaving dirty dishes in the sink, and showering only once a week. Tara is also running out of money, and worries she won’t be able to come back next semester. She sees that to get a full tuition scholarship, she’ll need a near-perfect GPA—given her struggles in her classes, she knows she won’t have one.
Tara’s struggles run deeper than social anxiety. The way she has been raised is in direct opposition to the way those around her have grown up, and the pressure to learn a whole new set of social skills—and keep up with her studies and finances, as well—wears on her as the semester goes by. Tara is learning that education is more than just book-learning.
Themes
When Tara’s first exam comes up, she is woefully unprepared. She doesn’t have a standard blue exam book to write in and has to borrow one from Vanessa. As the exam begins—and the professor projects images and compositions onto a screen, asking students to write about the prompts displayed there—Tara struggles with her spelling, and resorts to copying Vanessa’s answers. When the exam results come back a week later, she receives a failing grade.
Tara is adrift and alone, and needs to look to others for what to do—even when it’s wrong.
Themes
Tara remembers a time when Luke found a wounded owl out on the mountain and brought it home so Mother could treat its bad wing, pierced by a rogue thorn. The family kept the owl barricaded in the kitchen while it recovered, and occasionally fed it dead mice. The kitchen became foul-smelling and the owl grew restless. Tara and her family let it walk out the back door before it was fully healed—Dad said it couldn’t be taught to belong, and its chances were better out in the wild.
This anecdote about the owl seems to indicate that even though Tara is struggling at school—the “wild”—she’s needs to learn how to survive here, as anything is better than her claustrophobic, stifling home.
Themes
Tara wants to talk to someone about her struggles at BYU, and decides to call home. Dad answers, and Tara is surprised to find herself confiding in him about how hard things are. Rather than going off on a diatribe about gentiles, socialists, or the Illuminati, Dad tells Tara lovingly that everything will be all right. Tara knows that the moment of gentleness was a rare one as she hangs up the phone, but is grateful for it nonetheless.
In a rare moment of kindness and empathy, Dad puts aside his own personal beliefs to offer his daughter some emotional support. These strange moments of love and connection—small and sparse though they are—will prove to be enough to keep Tara coming back to Buck’s Peak.
Themes
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In March, it is time for another Western civilization exam. This time, Tara studies furiously, and even gets together with Vanessa to review notes. When Vanessa tells Tara that all the information she needs is in the textbook, Tara admits that she hasn’t read the textbook—she’s only looked at the pictures. Vanessa is shocked by Tara’s naivete, and instructs her to read the textbook in full. Tara takes her friend’s advice, and earns a B on the exam. What’s more, the professor announces that so many people failed the first exam that he’s dropping it. Tara wants to high-five Vanessa—but Vanessa, bewildered by Tara’s strangeness, has moved seats.
Tara’s success is staggered and uneven. She begins getting the hang of school—how to study, how to learn, and how to take an exam—but is still floundering socially. Again, she’s learning that her education will comprise more than becoming book smart—there are many other things she’ll have to learn along the way.
Themes
