Educated: Chapter 35 Summary & Analysis

Back at Cambridge, Tara withdraws from her friends. She is waiting for Shawn to put the pieces of what happened over the holidays together and realize that she and Audrey have been trying to make their family see the truth about him. Just as Tara predicted, in early March, she gets an email from Shawn: a single Bible passage with the phrase “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?” bolded. An hour later, Shawn calls Tara. She picks up the phone, and he asks her if she can help him make a decision. He tells her that he’s trying to decide whether he should come to England and kill her himself or hire an assassin to do the job—he can’t tell which would be “cheaper.”

Tara hangs up the phone, but Shawn calls again and again, leaving messages to tell Tara that his assassins are coming for her. Tara calls Mother to tell her what’s going on, but Mother says only that Shawn “doesn’t have that kind of money.” Tara tries to tell Dad, but Dad demands proof and asks why Tara wouldn’t have recorded the calls. Shawn eventually stops calling, and sends Tara a thousand-word email announcing that he’s cutting her out of his life.

When Tara tells her parents about the email, they tell her he’s “justified” in his actions. Dad accuses Tara of hurling “thoughtless accusations when it was obvious [her] memory couldn’t be trusted.” Mother tells her that her anger on the night of the confrontation with Shawn was “twice as dangerous as Shawn has ever been.” Tara feels her reality becoming “fluid.” Months later, in another conversation with her mother about the confrontation, Mother denies there having been any knife in the room at all, and describes Tara’s memories as “warped.”

That summer, Tara receives a grant to study in Paris. Drew goes along with her, and Tara rejoices in having a “new life” somewhere else, just for a little bit. Her happiness comes crashing down, however, when she checks her email one day to discover a message from Audrey, explaining that after a lecture from Dad, she has decided to forgive Shawn and cut off Tara. Audrey accuses Tara of being “dangerous” and “controlled […] by the Father of Fear, Lucifer.”

Tara feels she has lost her family. She knows that with the loss of Audrey’s support, they will all turn against her—no one will ever believe her. Despite her despair, Tara receives a letter telling her she’s won a  visiting fellowship to Harvard. Despite the prestigious post, Tara accepts the news with “indifference.” She has begun to “resent” what her education is costing her.

Tara feels her memories of the past changing. She cannot picture any member of her family without feeling an “ominous, indicting” sensation overtaking her associations with them. Tara begins to believe she’s going insane, and stops trusting her own memories. She relies on Drew to confirm simple facts about their lives together: whether they saw a certain friend the week before or two weeks ago, which block their favorite pastry shop sits on. Tara even begins questioning the detailed journals she’s kept for years.

Desperate to unravel the past she feels folding in on her, Tara emails Erin, one of Shawn’s old girlfriends to ask whether her memories of Shawn’s abuse are “deranged.” Erin confirms that Shawn was violent and cruel, and tells Tara about a time he “ripped her from her house and slammed her head against a brick wall.” In spite of Erin’s vivid account, Tara finds herself questioning it, too—perhaps, she thinks, Erin is just as “crazy” as she is.