Educated: Chapter 37 Summary & Analysis

After her parents’ visit, Tara begins sleepwalking and experiencing night terrors. She stops attending classes and spends all her time watching television in her room. She tries to read and keep up with her studies but can’t focus on the words in front of her. As the semester draws to a close, she realizes the damage she’s done to her life: she is in danger of failing her PhD and losing her family, too. Desperate to accept her father’s blessing and amends, she books a ticket home to Idaho for Christmas.

Tara tells Drew, who is studying in the Middle East, about her plans. He warns her not to go—if she gets into trouble or fights with Shawn and is wounded, no one will help her or take her to the hospital. He reminds her that she told him long ago to stop her if she ever tried to do something crazy, and that he’s trying to do that now—but Tara insists she can still fix things with her family, and boards the plane home.

Tara is shocked as she approaches Buck’s Peak—now that Grandma-down-the-hill is dead, the junkyard has expanded down the mountain, and the beautiful rolling hills are covered with rusted scrap. In spite of all that transpired back at Harvard, Mother is delighted to see Tara, and begins cooking her a large breakfast. As soon as Tara gets settled in, she writes Drew an email—she has promised to write him every two hours, so that if something goes wrong, he’ll know. As Tara opens the browser to start an email, she sees another exchange pulled up on the screen—a chain between Mother and Erin, in which Mother berates Tara for demonizing Shawn and Erin agrees that Tara is disturbed and delusional.

Having seen the emails, the stunned Tara at last accepts that Buck’s Peak is a maze designed to trap and confuse her. She realizes that she needs to go “before the walls shift” and box her in. Tara walks into the kitchen where Mother is preparing breakfast and announces that she’s going for a drive. Tara bids her parents goodbye, and they tell her that they love her. She responds that love has never been the issue—they are the last words she has ever spoken to her father.

As Tara drives to the airport to catch a flight back to Boston, Tyler calls. Apparently, shortly after she left the house, Mother caught on to what was happening and panicked. Afraid that Tara would call Tyler and tell him everything, Mother tried to catch him up on the events of the past year first, and tell him all about Tara’s confusion and damnation—but Tyler hung up the phone, knowing Tara had to be in the right. Now, he asks why she wouldn’t have called him or asked him for help. Tara wants to believe that Tyler is on her side, but is still haunted by Audrey’s betrayal, and fears that if forced to choose between Tara and the rest of the family, Tyler will choose them.

In the spring, Tara finishes her fellowship at Harvard and flies out to the Middle East to visit Drew. She tries to hide how bad things are, but cannot keep her night terrors from him. Back in England, at Cambridge, Tara continues to unravel. She develops migraines and hives and has her first-ever panic attack. She writes her parents a long, angry email explaining that she is cutting herself off from them for at least a year while she tries to make sense of her life.