Luke Westover Character Analysis in Educated

One of Tara’s older brothers. Luke’s most memorable story in the memoir occurs when he sustains an accident at the scrap yard—one of his legs catches fire, and he sustains horrible burns that debilitate him for weeks. When Mother’s salves heal Luke—without the intervention of pain medicine, doctors, or hospitals—Mother and Dad raise Luke up as an example of Mother’s strengths as an herbalist, and as the power of God’s will to rescue the truly devout from pain, infection, and even death.

Luke Westover Quotes in Educated

The Educated quotes below are all either spoken by Luke Westover or refer to Luke Westover. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Memory, History, and Subjectivity Theme Icon

Since the writing of [the story of Luke’s burn,] I have spoken to Luke about the incident. His account differs from both mine and Richard’s. In Luke’s memory, Dad took Luke to the house, administered a homeopathic for shock, then put him in a tub of cold water, where he left him to go fight the fire. This goes against my memory, and against Richard’s. Still, perhaps our memories are in error. Perhaps I found Luke in a tub, alone, rather than on the grass. What everyone agrees upon, strangely, is that somehow Luke ended up on the front lawn, his leg in a garbage can.

Related Characters: Tara Westover (speaker), Luke Westover, Richard Westover, Gene Westover / Dad

Page Number and Citation: 75

Explanation and Analysis:

Luke Westover Character Timeline in Educated

The timeline below shows where the character Luke Westover appears in Educated. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Family, Abuse, and Entrapment Theme Icon

When Tara’s older brother Luke turns fifteen, he asks Mother for a birth certificate. He wants to enroll in Driver’s... (full context)

...Dad, determined to keep making money and hold what’s left of the family together, makes Luke, Tara, and Richard work every day in the junkyard. Dad teaches the ten-year-old Tara the... (full context)

...while her brothers work in the junkyard and on the mountain with Dad. One afternoon, Luke, Tara’s seventeen-year-old brother, is helping Dad drain gasoline from the tanks of old cars before... (full context)

Tara, unaware of what’s happening up on the mountain, is washing dishes when she hears Luke’s strangled screams. She looks out the window to see him hobbling across the grass, calling... (full context)

Tara, only ten, doesn’t know what to do for Luke. She goes to fetch an ice pack to hold against the burn, but at the... (full context)

When Mother comes home that night, she tends to Luke’s wounds, cutting the plastic bag away and getting to work debriding the burns and dead... (full context)

Luke is confined to bed for weeks, and Dad instructs the family to tell their friends... (full context)

Tara blocks out the memory of the afternoon Luke got burned for over eighteen years. Now, at twenty-nine, as she sits down to write... (full context)

...to the house. She imagines her father beating back the flames with his shirt while Luke drove down the mountain. In a footnote, Tara reveals that Luke remembers the incident entirely... (full context)

...horses loose—now, a whole herd of wild horses lives on Buck’s Peak. Once a year, Luke, Richard, and Tara help Grandpa round up a handful of them to take to town... (full context)

...farm town” on the other side of the mountain. Dad’s crew consists of only Shawn, Luke, and Benjamin, but Shawn is a good foreman and makes sure that everyone is working... (full context)

...that the story of Shawn’s accident would come to her in “bits and pieces” from Luke and Benjamin, who were there when Shawn fell. Shawn was standing on a wooden pallet... (full context)

...when he sees Dad teaching Tara to use it just moments after the blade injures Luke, Shawn protests and pulls Tara away from the giant scissor’s jaws. Dad insists that Tara... (full context)

Tara remembers a time when Luke found a wounded owl out on the mountain and brought it home so Mother could... (full context)

...find the Indian Princess buried in snow atop the mountain. Tara barely recognizes her brother Luke, who has lost an eye in a paintball accident and grown a long, thick beard.... (full context)

At the funeral, Tara sits apart from most of her family. She catches glimpses of Luke and his giant “brood” of children; Richard, who has recently written to apologize for believing... (full context)

Luke Westover Character Analysis

Luke Westover Quotes in Educated

Chapter 7 Quotes

Luke Westover Character Timeline in Educated