Educated: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

That October, Dad wins a contract to build some industrial granaries in Malad City—a “dusty 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 hard every day.

Tara is still working for Randy, the man with the nut business. With his help, she learns to use the internet and a cell phone. Tara stays in touch with Tyler, and he encourages her to buy ACT study books and learn them so that she can apply to college. Tara, though, is unable to see where college will “fit in” with the predetermined plan for her life: to get married, have babies, and become an herbalist or midwife like Mother while her husband goes to work for Dad. When Tara goes online and sees the happy, smiling students on the BYU homepage, though, she becomes determined to pursue admission—she goes out and buys an ACT book and an algebra textbook and starts studying.

Tara spends all her downtime during play rehearsals teaching herself complicated math—trigonometry and algebra—and begins hinting about her plans to both Mother and Dad. Dad scoffs at Tara’s desire to go to college, insisting that “a woman’s place [is] in the home,” and accusing Tara of “whoring after man’s knowledge instead of God’s.” When Tara struggles with math, she asks Mother and Dad—but when her knowledge surpasses their own, she gets in touch with Tyler and begins meeting up with him at their aunt Debbie’s house for study sessions.

One evening, at Debbie’s, the phone rings: it is Mother, and she tells Tara to come home quickly as there’s been an accident in Malad. Mother has little information—all she can tell Tara is that Shawn has fallen on his head and been airlifted to a nearby hospital. Tara wants to go, but knows a storm is coming and she won’t be able to drive through it on bald tires.

Tara writes 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 raised on a forklift—a forklift Dad was driving. No one can pin down the exact reason for Shawn’s fall, or even come to a consensus on whether he was actually standing on a wooden pallet or just forklift tines—but whatever happened, Shawn lost his footing and plunged headfirst into a piece of metal jutting off the frame of one of the granary buildings. After the fall, Dad and the others examined Shawn. He had no apparent external injuries, and though they all noticed that his pupils were two different sizes, no one realized this meant that Shawn had a brain bleed. Dad told Shawn to sit down and take a break.

Apparently, about fifteen minutes after the fall, Shawn tried to get back to work, but as soon as Dad gave him instructions Shawn grew angry, irate, and violent. As he tried to attack Dad, the other boys leapt on him and tackled him to the ground. When Shawn’s head suffered yet another blow, he either had a seizure or lost consciousness—the details are “hazy”—and someone at last called 911, something no Westover had ever done before. Shawn screamed and flailed all the way to the hospital, where he finally blacked out.

The next morning, Tara drives back to Buck’s Peak—but rather than going to the hospital, she heads to work. Mother calls Tara to tell her that Shawn has been asking for her—hers is the only name he’s said since arriving at the hospital, and he does not recognize anyone else. Tara goes to the hospital, but Shawn is asleep, and after sitting with him a while, she leaves. The next morning, Tara returns—Shawn is conscious, and happy to see her. As she looks into Shawn’s eyes, she realizes why she didn’t come sooner—she had been “afraid that if he died, [she] might be glad.”

The moment Shawn is stable enough to leave the hospital, the Westovers take him home. For the next two months, he lives on the living room sofa, so weak he can barely make it to the bathroom and back. Though Shawn looks the same as he did before he accident, he is very different—he tells stories that make no sense, and he succumbs to blind rages and nastiness more and more often. Tara tries to convince herself that all of the changes in Shawn’s personality are new, and a result of his accident—but looking back, she now admits that he was probably just as cruel before the incident as he was afterwards.