Group Names: Lauren Andrade, Abigail Slama-Catron, Sofia Moeinvaziri, Raymond Powers

Educated: Week 2 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator/Prioritizer: Raymond
● Recorder: Lauren
● Connector: Sofia
● Questioner: Abigail

Notes

1. In the Author’s Note, Westover cautions that this memoir is not about Mormonism or “any form of
religious belief,” and that she rejects a negative or positive correlation between believing or not
believing and being kind or not being kind. But her father Gene’s faith is a sort of character in this book,
informing how he sees the world. What did you make of Chapter 8, “Tiny Harlots,” which moves from
Gene’s distrust of Westover’s dance recital uniform to his pride over her singing in church?
It shows how Gene cares about his family, but, to be happy and not sinful, his family needs to conform
to his ideals and belief on what he believes are and aren’t sins. For example, he basically called all of the
girls wearing their dance uniforms harlots/prostitutes because they were showing too much skin,
making them sinful. Yet, singing in the choir was supported greatly by Gene because he believed it
showed the strength of the “correct faith”, which is basically his faith. Gene believes that religion is one
of the most important aspects of his family, and dancing was against that religion. There will always be
someone who takes religion to the extreme, such as Gene, so they become close-minded to other
things, such as participating in dancing. Since she faced so much opposition, Tara eventually ended up
quitting dancing because her family not only though of her as a harlot, she also thought of herself as a
harlot because that idea was enforced in her mind by Gene (not her mother; her mother was okay with
it until Gene said it was wrong).

2. In Chapter 9, the anticlimactic passing of “Y2K” confirms that Tara’s home is a place ruled by her
father’s grand—but false—delusions. Tara is beginning to grasp the fact that her father doesn’t know
everything, and that his ideas and beliefs may actually be harmful. Tara’s father seems “smaller” to her
—she can see the “childlike” disappointment in his features as he reckons with the fact that the world
has continued spinning on. Why do you think this realization is happening now? What is it that is making
Tara start to question those beliefs and values?
This realization shows Tara how her father is outright wrong–earlier, he could have been wrong, but
Tara may not have known whether it was wrong. In the case of Y2K, Tara knows that he is wrong,
helping protect herself against her father’s future delusions. This realization is happening now because
of the dancing and singing; she originally was happy with it, but, because of her father’s delusions, she
believed that he was right, so she stopped. The realization enforced the belief that she doesn’t have to
follow her father’s beliefs, and that everything he believes isn’t correct. Her family, including herself,
was originally so convinced that Y2K was going to happen, but it never happened, showing Tara that she
can have opposing beliefs to her father that are also correct. A lot of cults tell their members that the
world is going to end, even though the cults’ leaders don’t fully believe it themselves, and the members
fully trust the leaders. A certain cult was so certain that something was going to happen that the leaders
told the members to kill themself before the event and, since they didn’t go through the same
revelation Tara went through, all the members killed themselves.

3. By Chapter 12, “Fish Eyes,” we are introduced to Shawn’s abuse of Westover and the other women in
his life, which recurs throughout the book. When Westover starts crying over one of these early
incidents, she writes that she is crying from the pain, not from Shawn hurting her, and that she sees
herself as “unbreakable.” She also writes that his abuse not affecting her “was its effect.” Why is this
insight important?
Tara is really invested in her family life because she is isolated from everyone else, so she felt that she
somewhat had to deal with it. She also somewhat implies that she somewhat expected the abuse based
on certain actions that he did. Tara feels like she has to deal with it, and she wants to make an excuse
for Shawn’s abuse. She doesn’t want to face the fact that someone she loves is abusing her. A lot of
abuse victims go through the same mentality that Tara is going through; they don’t want to really
acknowledge that they are getting abused because they care about them. Since she is so close to her
family and her circumstances are so different, she doesn’t believe that abuse is as important as making
sure that her family connections don’t deteriorate. Tara wants to keep the image of a “perfect family”;
everything that happens in the family, even if it is negative, is out of love.

4. In Chapter 14, Shawn has a major accident and gets a head injury. Tara explains that she has heard
conflicting accounts of Shawn's fall. At the end of the chapter, Tara talks about how she convinced
herself that "any cruelty on his part was entirely new. I can read my journals from his period and trace
the evolution--of a young girl rewriting her history. In the reality she constructed for herself nothing had
been wrong before her brother fell off that pallet" (131). Why do humans often "rewrite" their history?
Is it a function of memory? Does it have something to do with the brain? Why did Tara ultimately
"rewrite" it?
Tara wants to basically lie to herself and she wants to preserve her love for Shawn. She wants to justify
Shawn’s abuse, and she wants to keep the perfect image of her brother. Tara feels bad that Shawn
suffered from an accident, so she feels that it would be unjust if she remembered her brother as a bad
person. She “rewrites” history because she feels guilty for the accident, even though it wasn’t her fault.
She wants to blame the abuse on the accident. It has something to do with the brain; she may
remember that he abused her before the accident, but she wants to maintain a perfect image of Shawn.
This relates to 1984 as the people basically shut out of the minds the injustices they suffer because the
injustices are “helping” them.

5. What is the effect of Gene bringing in the television to the family home on Tara and her family?
Gene is so confident in Y2K and his beliefs that he believes that television wouldn’t change Tara and her
family’s trust in what he says. Even with the television, he will still remain the master of the house and
the all important person. It also shows how Gene will be willing to change in the face of “death” and
how when it comes to an end he is willing to let the outside world in. Gene getting the television and
Tara being confused as to why he does so illustrates how Tara doesn’t even fully understand her own
father. On D-Day, the Allies tricked the Germans, so the Germans fully believed that the Allies were
going to be at a certain point, so they weren’t at all prepared for when the Allies appeared to someone
else, similar to the situation with Gene and Y2K. The Germans and Gene were so convinced they were
correct, so when they weren’t, they were fully scattered and lost a lot of their credibility.

Summary: We focused mainly on Gene’s extremist behavior and how that impacts Tara and
her family because Gene is one of the main people that drives Tara’s choices. We also
talked about how Tara cares more about her familial love than physical pain she may suffer
as she believes that family is so important, so she will go to drastic lengths such as covering
up Shawn’s abuse. We talked about how Y2K is a turning point for Tara and she realized
that her father is not all-knowing, and this changed perspective influences Tara’s future
decisions. Tara realizes how she doesn’t fully understand her own father, so she justifies
his actions through the reasoning that, since she doesn’t understand her father, he must
have certain reasons for why he does certain things.