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
As a child, Tara writes, she was always waiting for her mind to grow, for her experiences to accumulate, and for her choices to solidify into “the likeness of a person.” The person Tara once was “belonged” to the mountain, and she often worries, even now, that “the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.”
In spite of her accolades and accomplishments, Tara still suffers from imposter syndrome—the belief that she does not deserve all she’s earned, and will always be the girl from the scrap yard on Buck’s Peak.
Themes
Tara writes that she has not seen her parents in years. She speaks to Tyler, Richard, and Tony regularly, and still visits Debbie and Angie. She hears stories about the “ongoing drama on the mountain”—tales of violence, injuries, and betrayed and shifting loyalties. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever find her way back to the mountain—for now, the distance from it brings her peace.
Tara allowed herself to be roped into her family’s dramas and conflicts for so much of her life that finally cutting her losses and accepting that she needed to move on has healed her in a way she never thought was possible.
Themes
Tara has learned to push aside her guilt over severing herself from her family and accept the decision on its own terms without “endlessly prosecuting [her] old grievances.” Much of her pain and anger comes from Dad, and Tara has had to separate herself from him in order to love him. The “breach” between them is “too vast to be bridged,” but now that she is away from his clutches and out of his shadows, she can see that while she is not the child her father hoped to raise, he is the father that raised the person she has become.
Tara admits that she still has love for her father, in spite of all he’s put her and her siblings through. She acknowledges that she would never have become the person she is without him—but also understands that there is a hurt between them that her father will never understand, and a “breach” between them that may never heal.
Themes
Tara often looks back on the night of the confrontation with Shawn, and the moments she spent staring into the mirror, wishing her sixteen-year-old self would crawl out of it. That night, when Tara called on her old self, her plea was not answered—the choices she made after that moment were entirely her own, the decisions of a new self. Her new self has suffered many things—transformation, falsity, and betrayal among them—but has, in spite of it all, received her education.
Tara concludes her memoir by declaring that her education has been difficult, painful, and nontraditional. As a young girl, she imagined education as a process that took place in the halls of a school or college; now, she sees that her entire life—good and bad—has been the source of her education.
Themes
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