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Chapter 30
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Educated, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, History, and Subjectivity
Learning and Education
Devoutness and Delusion
Family, Abuse, and Entrapment
Summary
Analysis
The day before returning to England, Tara drives to Audrey’s house to pay her sister a visit. Audrey is homeschooling her children, still convinced of the corruption of public schools. Tara plays with her nieces and nephews and gives them the gift of a tea set, but when they start quarrelling over the pieces, Tara takes the set away and tells them that if they act like children, she’ll treat them like children. She’s immediately horrified to find herself paraphrasing Shawn’s words—and shocked when Audrey, too, points out that Tara is using Shawn’s language. Tara wonders if she has more in common with her sister than she’s ever realized.
Tara has been mostly silent about the abuse she’s suffered at Shawn’s hands. Now, she faces a double-edged realization: she has internalized some aspects of Shawn’s cruel beliefs, but at the same time, may not be alone in the pain and suffering she’s endured.
Themes
Tara returns to Cambridge determined to try new things and remake herself entirely. She drinks wine for the first time and starts dressing more fashionably. She feels she finally fits in with everyone else. She even gets invited on a spring holiday to Rome with a group of friends. Traveling the ancient city with her sophisticated peers, Tara feels awed and happy—she realizes for the first time that she can “admire the past without being silenced by it.”
Tara has had a difficult trip home, and has had to bear witness to pain, suffering, and abuse. Back in her new life in Europe, she tries to forget all of that and learn how to hold both the person she is and the girl she once was in her head and heart.
Themes
When Tara returns home she excitedly checks her email for a message from Drew, who has become her boyfriend. Instead, there is a long, typo-filled message from Audrey. The email describes Audrey’s own experiences suffering Shawn’s abuses over the years, and Audrey apologizes for not protecting Tara from their violent older brother. Audrey admits that she has tried to tell Mother about her horrible memories of Shawn, but Mother has insisted they must be “false, impossible.” Audrey says she wants to at last confront Shawn and the entire family—and hopes Tara will stand with her. As Tara reads the message, she is angry at Audrey for pulling her back from her happy new life into her miserable old one. Nevertheless, Tara writes back and tells Audrey she’ll support her—but asks her sister to wait to confront the family until Tara is back in Idaho.
Tara is relieved to finally have an ally in Audrey—but nervous that in such a delicate situation, one false step or preemptive move could spell difficulty, pain, and ostracism for both of them. Tara wants to stand up for what’s right and reveal the truth about Shawn to her family, but knows that she and Audrey must stand together as an allied front to do so—otherwise, they’ll have no chance against Mother and Dad’s endless excuses and Shawn’s manipulations.
Themes
Audrey apparently shows the emails to Mother, and soon Tara is emailing with Faye about Shawn’s abuse. Mother apologizes for refusing to see the ugliness Shawn brought into their home, and believing Shawn’s lies about Tara always picking the fights. Tara is shocked when Mother compares Shawn’s abuse to the effect Dad’s bipolar disorder has had on the family—it is the first time she’s heard Mother reference the possibility that Dad might be mentally ill. Mother tells Tara that she wants to help her daughters “rewrite the story” of their own family. She once again apologizes for not protecting Tara, and Tara is overcome with love and gratitude.
Tara is elated when she realizes that not only is Audrey on her side, but Mother is too. Tara feels that she can at last begin to heal from the trauma of her past—she believes that everything will soon be out in the open, and that she will have love and support from her mother and her sister for the rest of her days.
Themes
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A week later when Tara talks to her mother, Faye assures her that Dad has been told about what’s going on, and that Shawn is going to get some help. Tara, relieved, puts the shame of her past from her mind and enjoys her happy present more intensely than ever before. She at last feels like she belongs at Cambridge, and begins telling her friends more and more of the truth about how she was raised. Tara realizes the shame she’s carried for so long has come from having parents who didn’t protect her when they should have. Now that Tara believes her family’s story is being “rewritten,” she’s confident that the past doesn’t matter—only the future does.
The emails with Mother and Audrey have emboldened Tara to reframe her past. She is able to talk about where she comes from with her new friends because she believes that things are about to change for the better—it’s easier to share anecdotes about her homeschooling and days working in the junkyard when she believes she’ll soon be able to tell normal stories, too.
Themes
