Educated: Chapter 29 Summary & Analysis

After Tara returns to BYU from Cambridge, she almost wishes she could forget the profound happiness she experienced there—but her mentors will not allow her to forget. Professor Steinberg encourages her to apply for a prestigious scholarship to study at Cambridge, and she does.

Tara begins thinking more seriously about what it means to be a Mormon—and the church’s checkered history and practices of polygamy and misogyny. Never having made peace with the way Mormonism treated its women, Tara reflects on the story of her great-great-grandmother—a Norwegian immigrant named Anne Mathea who converted her entire family to Mormonism and convinced them to move to America. Anne Mathea left everything behind and suffered greatly in her new life, devoted to her new faith but faced with a loveless marriage, a stillborn child, and a polygamist husband. Tara feels conflicted about following in her ancestors’ footsteps.

Tara is selected for a short list of finalists for the Gates scholarship at Cambridge, and Robin helps her prepare for the interview by shopping for new clothes and rehearsing questions. Two weeks before the interview in Annapolis, Tara’s parents come to visit her at BYU for the first time on their way to Arizona. Dad orders a ton of food at a local restaurant, wanting to show off how much money he and Mother have because of her booming essential oil business. While waiting for the food, Dad deems French, which Tara is studying, a “socialist language” and rattles off conspiracy theories about Jewish bankers having engineered the Holocaust. Tara stares at him in shock and disgust, but doesn’t speak up against him. At the end of the night, Tara is relieved when her parents get into their car and drive away.

Tara wins the Gates scholarship and becomes something of a local celebrity at BYU. The student paper and local news interview her, and the announcement of her success plasters BYU’s online homepage. When reporters ask Tara about her high school experience, Tara dodges their questions and often lies outright—she doesn’t tell anyone that she never went to school before BYU, confused by the narrative and message of her own life. 

A month before graduation, Tara visits Buck’s Peak. Dad reprimands her sharply for not telling people about being homeschooled and accuses her of not being “grateful” to him and Mother for taking her out of school in the first place. He berates her for deciding to go to a “socialist countr[y]” for her education, and vows to “stand and speak” at her graduation, testifying against Tara’s socialist, gentile professors. Tara tells him that he will behave in no such way.

Tara is honored at a dinner and a luncheon for outstanding undergraduates in the days prior to her graduation, but her parents attend neither ceremony. When she calls them to ask if they’re coming, Mother tells her that Dad, offended, will not come unless she apologizes for her behavior in Buck’s Peak. The desperate Tara relents, and her parents arrive at the very end of her official graduation ceremony. That night, Tara is due to fly straight to England. As her parents drive her to the airport and say goodbye to her, she senses “fear and loss” in her father’s face.

On her last night in Buck’s Peak, Tara remembers, Dad whispered to her that if the End Days came, and she was in America, they could come for her—if she is overseas, he fears, he will not be able to “make [her] safe.”