Educated: Week 1 Discussion

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Norms

Make a list of your group norms below.

1. Don't engage in other people's convos outside the group
2. Accepting of other views
3. No dominating conversations
4. No yelling
5. Constructive debates

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator: Fisher
● Recorder: Claire
● Prioritizer: Juno
● Connector: Shivani
● Questioner: Logan

Notes

1. Educated starts with an epigraph from Virginia Woolf: “The past is beautiful because one never
realizes an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the
present, only the past.” What do you think Woolf meant by this? Why do you think Tara Westover chose
to begin her memoir this way?

- From what we've read so far, past doesn't seem beautiful, so this wording is ironic
- Was she abused?
- In the present it's hard to understand emotions, but when you look back on it you can see a
bigger picture and influences etc.
- was happy where she was
- Chose to begin: sets up the story and how it's a poetic reflection on her past
- In the moment it’s a different experience then when it’s a memory.

2. In the first pages of Educated, we are introduced to the mountain in rural Idaho where the Westover
family lives, described as a dark, beautiful, and commanding form in a “jagged little patch of Idaho.” How
does this setting inform the family’s experience?

- Where she is seems insignificant, negative connotation

 - Isolated space, not much outside influence
- Key setting point, this is where everything takes place and her reasoning is developed because
she lives so isolated
- They praise the mountain, it provides so much livelihood
- The mountain symbolically shelters their little house from the government and undesirable parts
of the world, but it also blocks out the societal trends and beliefs
- The mountain is unmovable, but people leave
- It's always "leave the mountain”not leave home

3. We are also introduced early in the book to the standoff at Ruby Ridge, a 1992 gunfight between FBI
agents and U.S. marshals and a heavily armed family on an isolated homestead. How does this incident
cast a shadow over the Westover parents and children, and the survivalism that characterizes their
upbringing?

- The dad: change from his charismatic childhood, to paranoid present

- Constant repetition of the story, uses it as justification to push us vs them mentality
- Change in the way they parent. Tara says that her brothers grew up with different parents than
she did
- Kids grow up in a sheltered one sided experience. Drilled to fear the government, but be
prepared to fight
- Turning point that lead to societal disconnection
- How the story affects each child individually and influences their future. Crickets to gunshots

4. In Chapter 5, Westover’s brother Tyler announces that he’s going to college, something none of her
other siblings have done. Why does Westover’s father, Gene, object to formalized education? How does
Tyler’s leaving have an impact on Westover?

- Gene thinks brainwash, against the government

- He believes in the illuminati
- Gene’s mental illness, rationality v irrationallity. Paranoia
- Tyler was Tara's one link to the other world. To what life could be like outside of the mountain.
- His introduction of music
- She’s going to be left with her parents
- First one to leave for education, has a chance to create a new life, leave his fathers stress behind him
Tyler taught her to be calm and patient, a different side of herself from the rowdy family that lives in the
forest. When she’s with him, it’s as if she lives with the town grandparents.

5. How does the setting influence their religion?

- Very strictly and radically mormon, the church has been taken over. Very different from
mormons in Midvale Utah
- Go into their own sect of religion, stripping principles to the basics and building them up with
their own philosophies.
- Dad pushed so hard to prove that he is a true member.
- Emphasis on teaching and preparing for the second coming
Random:
- The switch between the past and present in the narrator. Creates a very condensed viewpoint
with hints of more for the reader. It’s very fascinating
-