Group Names: Grace Gold, Campbell Hone, Maggie Baumgarten

Educated: Week 2 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator/Prioritizer: Andrew Wan

● Recorder: Grace Gold
● Connector: Campbell Hone
● Questioner: Maggie Baumgarten

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?
Most of the problem was with the outfits, although another major thing was that it was being held in the
church. He like the talent of the singing rather than the outfits used with dancing. Singing hymns goes
well with faith. Pride for singing in church, and pride in being right. Church is the one way that Gene
allows his family to interact with others due to a deep belief in it. It’s one of his few passions in life. Her
mother supported it until the father got to the recital, showing the submission that the mother has to
the father overall.

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?
Because her siblings are going off on their own, as well as her going off on her own, she is seeing how
they all have their own views beginning to be developed. She has started questioning this because of
what she and her family are starting to be exposed to both from her family and on her own. With the
disappointment of the End of Days not happening, and the addition of the Holy War, going from one
extreme to another makes her a little more questioning of the values and delusions of her father. Gene
has a lot of pride in these extreme events, to the point of shaming others.

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?
Not affecting her shows that she has no one left to turn to. Seeing herself as that Unbreakable person
shows that she has to stay strong. She wants to look strong for other people, even though they would
understand how she feels. We as human beings see that all the time as we are told to “keep your
emotions in check” so we don’t seem weak to other people. She thinks that it's her fault, so she lets it
continue to happen. Shawn has brought in aspects of both the real world and from her father with the
need to be in control.

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?
She wanted to pretend that her brother was cool, that everything that happened was because of one
specific event. She cares for him after the accident, and believes that one event is what caused it, when
in reality not a whole ton changed because of one event. She rewrote it subconsciously, not wanting to
deal with it in her head, off the record. Humans rewrite their histories based on other accounts and their
world view at the time. Memory isn’t always reliable when trying to conform to the beliefs of others.
Rewriting history can be a function of memory, but it is more a device.

5. What really happened when Luke got burned? Did Gene manage to get Luke down the hill, or did he
put out the fire from the brush? Was he there at all? How does time play tricks on memory?
Memory will become less clear and distorted over time with other people telling of the event and the
emotional responses to it. We tend to change our emotional response over time to certain events. She
remembers the pain and bad emotions rather than the smaller positive emotions of her father possibly
being there, leaving only the negative emotions as the memory. Most of the memories in the book are
very negative, even though the more positive stuff came mainly from memories with Tyler and Audrey,
as well as with the outside world.

Summary:
Memory is strange and gets distorted easily, especially with time. Westover’s family and each different
member of the family gives her a different view of reality. She associates good emotions and memories
with things in the outside world and more negative memories with things in her family because of
experiences that happened within her family and home. Her way of coping is thinking and believing that
it didn’t happen to help it not affect her as much. The author states that the book isn’t about
Mormonism, but religion definitely plays a large part in her life, whether directly or indirectly.